Peak Oil Anarchy

Converging Ecological Crises: Are We Up To The Challenges?

2006-08-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

By Dr. G.F. Hartman / Monday, July 31, 2006

There is a very substantial volume of highly credible writing, for anyone that wants to see it, that warns us that humankind has only a few decades left in which to ‘get it right’. We face demographic challenges and global ecological disruptions on scales like nothing that people have seen before. This is no longer news; the information is out there. In spite of this, most people in North America are still ‘sleepwalking’ into the future.

Part of the quandary we face is that the more complex and long range the issues are, the less suited our political system is to meet them, and the less inclined people are to think about them. For the politician, discussion of mega-environmental issues and the politics involved does not attract votes for the next election. Indeed, thinking beyond the next election does not fit the agenda in our power-obsessed political system. For much of the public, discussion of impending crises is apt to lead only to dismissal – ‘doomsday talk; now lets see who is winning the hockey game’. It is a societal failure that, at a time when we need political people to share responsibility as we face rough seas ahead, there is neither leadership nor vision. There is no one at the wheel.

I urge that readers do not escape by ‘turning me off’. Our children and grandchildren will not be able to ‘turn off’ the massive impacts of the changes that are converging around us now. The denial of today, is the parent of the disaster and discomfort of tomorrow.

If there was such a thing as a report card on humanity, at the beginning of the 21^st century, the failing grades would outnumber the passes and pluses. Ecological and demographic dangers are not offset by the positive and encouraging things that are occurring. Not only that, when we do look at issues, the examinations are too often only skin-deep. If and when media coverage is given to large-scale environmental crises, the coverage is on a single problem basis. In addition, mass media coverage is, far too often, absorbed with the symptoms of problems rather than base causes. Blood and tears sell, penetrating analysis does not.

What is crucial to understand and face up to, is the fact that we are not confronted by a single issue such as climate change, depletion of oil, or loss of fish resources, serious as each of these may be. We are, in reality, confronted by an inter-connected complex of environmental and resource loss and/or breakdown challenges that will shape the societies of the future. The elements within the list of challenges are formidable:

We add about 70 million people per year to an already overloaded planet. Writers who hold the darkest vision suggest that after reaching 8 or 9 billion people on earth, environmental collapse will drive human numbers back by two thirds. Like almost everywhere else, we are ‘in the game’ in B.C. Here, we add about 50 thousand per year to our own province with its southern portions already people-stressed.
We are at, or past, ‘peak oil’. The major reserves have been located and we are now using them up. There are no comparable and flexible substitutes for this energy bonanza, laid down over millions of years but consumed in only one or two centuries. The sub-urban sprawl of North America, the long-range transport of food, the operation of our great sky-scrapers, and life built around the automobile are all in peril. Read J.H. Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency”. The influence of declining oil supplies will affect nations, worldwide. In Canada, declining supplies and increasing costs of oil and gas will be critical to people living in colder regions, wherever these may be as climate warms up.
Climate is changing with a powerful array of potential impacts on water availability, forests, fishes, infrastructure, health conditions, and livability of many regions without cheap energy. See Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, or read the book. Although the impacts of climate change are many, the people of central B.C. are living with one of major importance to their livelihood. The eruption of Mountain Pine Beetle from Clinton to Fort Nelson is, in large measure, due to changing winter climate conditions.
In association with increased CO_2,ocean pH is decreasing, i.e., acidity is increasing. The effects of such change on corals reefs, and production and composition of marine plankton, are not known. Prof. D. Pauly, Head of the Fisheries Centre at UBC, in a recent interview on CBC radio, regarded ocean pH change as enormously significant and risky.

Freshwater resources of the world, and of many parts of B.C., are dangerously over-taxed with use, or are being degraded. It is projected that by 2025, between 2.4 and 3.4 billion people will live in conditions of water scarcity or stress. Considering local examples, here in the lower mainland of ‘Supernatural British Columbia’, groundwater is being heavily charged with nitrate from chicken farms. Nitrate is well above the level of 10mg/L, the acceptable standard for drinking water. Worldwide, about 460 million people depend, almost entirely, on groundwater reserves that are being used faster than replenishment. Such use includes that of the 450,000 km² Ogallala Aquifer underlying eight U.S. states. When that aquifer is depleted, American water users will come to Canada for water. If such required water is deemed to be of “national security” to the USA, you decide how much, and how effectively we will be able to “negotiate”.

Major fisheries of the world are under assault. According to a study in the scientific journal “Nature” (2003), industrial fleets have fished out about 90% of all large ocean predator fish – tuna, marlin, swordfish, sharks, cod, halibut, skates, and flounders. This done in the last 50 years. Midwater fish species, that were at one time considered unusable, are now being fished down as well. Pacific salmon are in decline from central B.C. southward through the US Pacific Northwest. Freshwater fish over much of the world are put in jeopardy by forestry activities. Much of this is covered in a book by T.G. Northcote and G.F. Hartman, “Fishes and Forestry: Worldwide Watershed Interactions and Management”.

Since the dawn of agriculture we have lost about half of the earth’s natural forest. The annual, worldwide, loss of natural forest is currently about 120,000 km² per year. Tropical forests are under assault from both the forestry and agriculture sectors. Boreal forests across the world are at risk of loss due to climate warming.

Our perennial demand for economic growth, which invariably results in conversion of ecosystems to human use, reduces biodiversity which ultimately affects the stability of these systems (See http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-dawe030406.htm)

Functional ecosystems of the earth provide us with vital services such as water treatment and detoxification, waste assimilation, regulation of air quality, control of erosion, regulation of local climate, spiritual fulfillment, and many other things. These services, valued at near 33 trillion dollars per year, have been put at risk by our collective activities. The “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report” (2005) states that 60%, 15 out of 24, ecosystem services evaluated are being degraded or used unsustainably.

On the ‘plus side’, there are important positive elements:

Awareness of our plight is increasing, and hundreds of thousands of individuals and groups are actively involved in dealing with environmental issues.
Means and scale of communication have increased. Television and the internet, if used responsibly, have wonderful potential to inform and connect people. The David Suzuki shows have increased awareness among tens of thousands of viewers.
The powerful documentary movie and the book, “An Inconvenient Truth” by Vice- President Al Gore has reached million of North Americans.

The list of demographic, environmental, and resource challenges indicates the powerful but unbalanced array of processes occurring on our planet. One way or another, some or all of these will affect people everywhere. Many of these dangerous and disturbing processes are interconnected, and the interconnections lead back to the reality that excessive numbers of people and their consumptive demands are overstressing the planet. As it stands, and as we behave now, increasing crowding and “shortages” will exacerbate the ongoing lawlessness and civil strife on earth.

I believe that the next few decades will make it even more clear to us that we can not sustain the kind of social and economic systems that have prevailed over North America. Environmental and resource changes will force us into a very different relationship with the earth. It will be one that involves less consumption, less waste, and less travel. Life may, indeed, be less comfortable. Our legacy may be that future generations look back at us with dismay and resentment.

If we go back to biological principles, every animal species on earth lives in some state of balance with other species and the physical environment. Whether it is an experimental population of meal worms in a jar of cereal, a population of snowshoe hares in the Arctic, or salmon in the Fraser River system, the numbers go up and down, but they don’t rise indefinitely. We too, are bound by this ecological reality. Compounding technology, as we have too often used it, has served only to increase, our numbers, our developmental pressures on the environment, and ultimately, the distance we may fall when the system collapses.

The convergence of ecological crises demands that we go further than trying to deal singly with climate change, or depletion of oil, or some other issue. It demands that we move to ‘steady state’ economies and populations, not those growing like mad. It demands, also, human behavior in which we are part of the system, not an increasingly dominant element within it. Politically and socio-economically, we will have to make a quantum shift. The challenge of doing so, and having a vision-driven role on the earth, beyond growth and profit, may be one of the most difficult that we have faced, or will have to face, as a species.

The political systems of today seems to be quite unsuited for dealing with the massive and complex ecological and social challenges that are either here or on the horizon. These challenges eclipse most of the issues that currently occupy our politicians.

I believe that we should seek some type of forum, however chosen, whose role it is to understand ‘macro-issues’, and to inform and encourage elected people to get them to deal with challenges that may not be popular in the short term. I do not know exactly what the structure of such a forum might be, but we need a ‘long-term brain’ for government. As part of the foundation for this, we need awareness.

This critical foundation requires that we recognize and begin to understand the full nature of our situation. The extent to which we can do this, and have some influence on our own future rather than having nature make the decisions for us, may tell us just how much we deserve the “sapiens” in Homo sapiens, the Latin species name we have given ourselves. We had better be “sapient” (wise) because ‘nature bats last’.

G.F. Hartman

July 2006

Born in Fraser Lake, Dr. Gordon Hartman is known the world over as one of the most knowledgeable scientists on any fishery. He has a Ph.D. in zoology, was the scientist in charge of a major fish-forestry research project, held senior positions in the provincial government and the Yukon government; He has taught at the university level for about six years (University of Guelph and Addis Ababa University) and spent three years in Africa with CIDA for two, and FAO for one. He thinks he has written about 80 publications, scientific, or managerial, or philosophical.

Worldwide Protests Slam G8 Support of Nuclear, Coal, Oil

2006-07-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

The protests included large "banner drops" in multiple cities, protests of coal and oil companies, and rallies at the U.S. embassy in London and the Washington, DC home of U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. On Friday, protestors showed up at Bodman's home, demanding that the United States and the G8 abandon the focus on nuclear, coal, and on oil wars as "energy security." They chanted "No Coal, No Nukes, G-8 shut it down!" No arrests took place.

"The G8 countries represent just 15 percent of the world's population but they produce 45 percent of all human emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas," said Ethan Green of Rising Tide North America, a group that publicized the July 15 protests against climate change and the G8 in the United States.

"Poor, indigenous and environmentally vulnerable communities should not bear the brunt of disease epidemics, droughts, floods, melting ice, rising oceans, hurricanes, and other catastrophes caused by the global climate change that rich countries are responsible for due to our prodigious burning of coal, oil and gas for energy," said Green.

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Protesters Condemn G8 Support of Nuclear, Coal, Oil

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, July 17, 2006 (ENS) - Demonstrators blockading a main thoroughfare in St. Petersburg were arrested on Sunday as they protested the Group of Eight, G8, statement on Global Energy Security that includes support for nuclear power. They blocked the entrance of a hotel on the Nevsky Prospekt which was used by participants of the G8 summit.

Protesters from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk, Chishinau, Warsaw, Kiev, Cardiff, and Berlin took part in the demonstration, displaying posters saying "No G8!" in Russian and English.

Russian riot police arrested all of the 37 activists and cleared the roadway. Some of the activists sat down and had to be carried away, others were forced to leave the street in what they said was a brutal manner.

"We wanted to voice our demands to not develop nuclear energy," said Olga Miryasova from Russia's Network Against the G8.

The protesters staged their demonstration to coincide with the G8 summit at Strelna where the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union wound up their three day meeting today.

The sit-in took place despite the growing suppression of dissent by the Russian government in recent years. Russian authorities preemptively arrested over 200 activists before the G8 summit and forbade protesters from leaving an alternative conference in St. Petersburg held on Saturday.

The G8 statement on global energy security advocates nuclear energy as one way to address global climate change, yet environmental activists warn that nuclear energy cannot be considered a positive way to reduce carbon emissions and combat global climate change.

"Nuclear reactors are dangerous, extremely expensive, take many years to build, and require massive government subsidies," the demonstrators said in a statement.

The activists say they would like this funding to be used to quickly reduce carbon emissions through energy efficiency measures, development of renewable energy sources, and restoration of damaged wetland and forest ecosystems.

In coalition with the protests in St. Petersburg, international demonstrations occurred on July 14 and 15 in numerous cities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Venezuela, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Germany.

On Friday, protestors showed up at Bodman's home, demanding that the United States and the G8 abandon the focus on nuclear, coal, and on oil wars as "energy security." They chanted "No Coal, No Nukes, G-8 shut it down!" No arrests took place.

On Friday, as a part of the Global Day of Action Against the G8 a small group of protesters demonstrated in front of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Sydney, Australia. The five protesters displayed signs, shared vodka and iced tea, discussed the implications of the G8's continued existence, and expressed solidarity with the protesters in Russia.

In fear of a larger demonstration, the consulate was closed to visitors, part of the street was cordoned off, and at least 10 police officers guarded the area near the entrance.

In Canada on Tuesday, a demonstration is planned at the Sidney, British Columbia office of federal Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn, to protest the withdrawal of support for the Kyoto climate protocol by the recently elected Conservative government.

The protesters, organized by the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, will hold a brief rally with speakers, songs by the Raging Grannies, placards, and banners, followed by a petition drive to passersby in downtown Sidney, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the provincial capital of Victoria.

The Western Canada Wilderness Committee is calling on the federal Conservative government of Canada to "at the very least, honor Canada's participation in the Kyoto Accord by working to achieve its emissions targets for Canada of six percent below 1990 emissions levels by the year 2012."

The protesters fault the Conservatives for "scrapping Canada's obligation to meet Kyoto's emissions reductions targets, falsely stating that it's impossible to meet the targets."

They object to the elimination of over a dozen major federal climate change programs, including the C$1 billion dollar Partnership Fund which was to be used for climate change projects for five provinces, as well as the EnerGuide Program to provide rebates to Canadians who buy more energy efficient appliances.

The Wilderness Committee says a leaked government document shows the Conservatives are "working to delay, obstruct and sabotage progress during negotiations among Kyoto signatories by trying to weaken emissions reductions targets, with a goal of eventually eliminating the entire agreement."

Instead of reducing greenhouse gases, the demonstrators say the Conservatives are granting "huge subsidies to the highly destructive Alberta tar sands industry and the oil and gas industry in general."

May 6, DC Petrocollapse Conference: Culture Change and Sustainable Post-Petroleum Living

2006-04-15T00:39:00.000-07:00

The DC Petrocollapse Conference
www.petrocollapse.org

Surviving Peak Oil: Economic Doom or Transformation?
Culture Change and Sustainable Post-Petroleum Living

*************************

FEATURING DC PREMIERE OF THE NEW DOCUMENTARY FILM:
"The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil"

You are invited to attend!
All Souls Unitarian Church
16th and Harvard Streets, NW, Washington D.C.
Columbia Heights Metro Station
Saturday, May 6, 2006 9 am - 7 pm

Speakers at the DC Petrocollapse Conference will include peak-oil author Richard Heinberg. Experts on peak oil, small-scale agriculture and alternative energy will discuss "petrocollapse," the imminent failure of the petroleum infrastructure to continue to provide the myriad goods and services that our consumer economy has grown accustomed to. Multimedia presentations and multiple films will demonstrate solutions to the audience.

At The Petrocollapse Conference we will ask

* What are we facing now as the economy prepares to hit the wall
known as resource limits? Will growth suddenly implode?
* How will Peak Oil (a geological phenomenon) and petrocollapse (an economic and social phenomenon) effect food supply and other services we depend on?
* What mitigation strategies are possible?
* What is the role of the market in determining how severe the
effect of shortage stemming from geological depletion will be ?
* Upon upheaval, deprivation, and a restructuring of social relations in a "new" local economics system, will we choose to create a sustainable culture?

DC PETROCOLLAPSE CONFERENCE SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE:
*Albert Bates Global Ecovillage Network; author
*Diana Leafe Christian Communities Magazine
*Richard Heinberg Author, The Party's Over and Powerdown
*Michael Kane From the Wilderness publications
*Jan Lundberg Oil industry analyst; http://culturechange.org
*Jenna Orkin Moderator; World Trade Center Environmental Org.
*Joel Salatin Organic Agriculturalist, http://polyfacefarms.com
*Mark Robinowitz http://Oilempire.us; author, Permatopia
*David Room Post Carbon Institute; Global Public Media

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND!
Register online via PayPal at http://petrocollapse.org/register.html

Scholarships, work exchange arrangements, and "sliding scale" discounts are available for students, activists, and those who can't afford the $100 registration cost. Send us an email with the details of your situation, and/or what time or energy you may have for volunteer activity for the conference. Send to conferences@culturechange.org

No one will be turned away at the door for lack of funds, so long as space is available. However, seats are filling fast, so you are encouraged to register ASAP!

For more information, visit petrocollapse.org and
check out the DC PetroCollapse Conference press release below

*********

MEDIA ALERT -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DC Petrocollapse Conference: May 6, 2006
All Souls Church, Unitarian 16th & Harvard, Washington, D.C

A conference on the effects of peak oil and the growing global energy crisis will take place in Washington, DC on May 6th at the All Souls Church, Unitarian from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. Speakers include peak-oil author Richard Heinberg.

Conference organizer and speaker Jan Lundberg is a former oil industry analyst who ran the market research firm Lundberg Survey. Lundberg, who quit serving the oil industry so he could put his knowledge to use to protect the environment, says "M. King Hubbert, who developed the theory of peak oil, observed that we do not have an energy crisis but rather a culture crisis. This fits with the theme of the Washington DC Petrocollapse Conference that there is no technofix for our energy dilemma. Society will have to bring about a closer level of community and rediscover what grassroots economies are all about."

The May 6th conference will feature Richard Heinberg, the most-read peak oil author (The Party's Over, and Powerdown). Films and music will be also offered as part of a varied program to stimulate discussion and action by attendees. Heinberg and Lundberg and others will perform music including oil-satire songs. Films will include premiers of "Our Synthetic Sea" (plastics pollution in oceans) and "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil."

Lundberg says the Petrocollapse Conference asks, "What we can do in advance of the social upheaval and chaos that may produce a 'national New Orleans,' to prepare or mitigate? What will the future look like during and after a transition to non-petroleum living?"

For more information, see http://petrocollapse.org

Peak Opportunity! Earth Liberation and the Oil Endgame

2006-03-31T09:44:00.000-08:00

Published in Earth First! Journal, Eostar (March-April) 2006
and online at http://PeakOilAnarchy.blogspot.com by Acornista

By now, all radical environmentalists—if not all humans—should be aware of the fatal ecological effects of civilization’s unsustainable energy binge. Yet many of us have been slow to grasp the true gravity of what our rapid depletion of non-renewable fossil fuels portends.

We must recognize three essential points about civilization’s imminent energy future: First, the unfolding “energy crisis” is real and will soon manifest as chronic oil scarcity. Second, industry is seeking to quickly and quietly implement a nightmarish swarm of ultra-dirty oil “substitutes,” ranging from coal-to-oil “liquefaction” in Appalachia to nuclear-powered “heavy oil” mining in northern Canada and biofuel plantations in South America. Rather than presenting feasible solutions, these “alternatives” are unsustainable and ecologically destructive. Third, we cannot cling to the hope that scientists will unveil a magical cocktail of clean, oil-free “alternative” technologies that will power a benign “new civilization.”

Unless societies learn to sharply reduce their ecological footprints, any large-scale energy alternatives will ultimately prove ineffective because they would prolong and intensify destructive practices. It is time to seriously consider that our best hope for a biodiverse Earth and a biocentric future for humanity would be civilization’s collapse. Let’s dream our post-petroleum utopias unapologetically wild.

To liberate the Earth and ourselves from the carnage that oil elicits, we need to clarify where civilization is going, as well as where our movements are coming from. Attempts at environmental legislative reform through emissions standards, “smart growth” regulations and the Kyoto Protocol have failed to deter oil’s speeding devastation. Grassroots struggles to restrain the petroleum economy’s spread and to spur lifestyle shifts toward renewable energies have been far too weak, late and limited to halt overarching ecocidal trends. Despite countless small-scale victories won by indigenous and eco-activist resistance, hydrocarbon hunger has metastasized globally, placing civilization on a collision course with its own decimation of the Earth.

But it is our very gluttony for fossil fuels that presents the single greatest threat to our unsustainable civilization. A startling body of evidence is now foretelling the beginning of the end of oil’s heyday.

Peak Petroleum?

This unique geological opportunity is called “peak oil,” the moment of global maximum oil production, when approximately half of the Earth’s total oil supply has been pumped and remaining reserves offer decreasing yields. Extraction at any individual oil field follows a bell curve; production increases, plateaus and then declines irreversibly as the supply is exhausted. Peak oil is merely the extrapolation of the behavior of individual oil fields to the global supply.

In any field, the purest oil is always the most accessible and, thus, the first to be extracted. As oil disappears, the crude becomes increasingly difficult to refine. Production costs escalate and more energy must be used to bring lower-grade oil to market. When this happens to the global supply, consumer prices will skyrocket to offset the costs. Finally, oil production will require the expenditure of more energy than it yields and will become prohibitively expensive. Collapse will result not from the disappearance of oil, but from the vanishing of cheap oil.

Although we won’t recognize the moment of peak oil until it has already passed, many clues signal that it is near. In November, Kuwaiti officials announced that output from the world’s second-largest oil field was “exhausted” and declining. Shortly after, speakers at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil’s annual conference all agreed that global oil decline would certainly begin before 2010. Some argued that we are peaking now. More than 50 oil-producing countries have already peaked. Global discovery of oil reserves peaked in the 1960s, and big finds are now rare. The average find is 50 million barrels. This sounds huge until you consider that humans consume 84 million barrels every day. US oil production peaked in 1970 and continues to decline, even as Americans devour 25 percent of the global supply. Only the vast oil fields of Saudi Arabia sustain the illusion that petroleum-based civilization can grow forever. But this is not so. Ninety-five percent of Saudi output comes from only six fields, which all show signs of petering out.

False Hope on the Depletion Slope

Opinions differ widely about what peak oil means for humanity. Some permaculture enthusiasts are advocating boldly optimistic visions of graceful “energy descent” down the oil-depletion slope. They hope that geologically imposed limits to reckless consumption will compel societies to adopt ecofriendly alternatives. At the other extreme, many capitalist intellectuals are confident that civilization, led by fresh waves of technological innovation, will seamlessly adapt to oil decline. They predict that oil depletion will be a “non-event” due to the implementation of other unconventional fuel sources that will significantly offset dwindling oil reserves.

One such “solution” is the exploitation of tar sands in arctic Canada’s Mackenzie Valley. Approximately two tons of tar sands are required to produce a single barrel of oil, with more than one million barrels being extracted every day. This process strips soil and rock from forests, boils oil out of sand with hot water and leaves behind giant cesspools of wastewater. Since the 1960s, the extraction of tar sands has damaged more than 80,000 acres of forest and wetlands, and plans call for production to triple by 2015. Moreover, the tar sands industry is extremely inefficient, necessitating huge energy inputs to produce comparatively modest yields. To supply the industry’s voracious energy needs, a new infrastructure of massive natural gas pipelines and nuclear plants has been proposed.

A similar, even dirtier process is the mining of oil shale. Located on about 16,000 square miles of land in remote parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, oil shale represents an estimated 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil—enough to meet US oil demand for nearly 100 years. The extraction process is so obscenely heat- and water-intensive that it has only been attempted experimentally. Nevertheless, the Department of Energy projects yields of “200,000 barrels a day from oil shale by 2011, two million barrels a day by 2020 and ultimately 10 million barrels a day.” In January, the Bureau of Land Management awarded six new 160-acre leases to oil companies for the development of oil shale extraction on federal lands in Colorado and Utah. Currently, the corporation most deeply invested in oil shale is Shell.

In the US, coal-to-oil refineries are now on the drawing board in Montana, West Virginia and Wyoming. But eastern Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill County—an economically depressed region dependant on waste dumping, coal mining, waste coal burning and prisons—is likely to become the site of the first such plant. Construction on the refinery is scheduled to begin this Spring and could be complete by as early as 2008. This facility will be a heavily subsidized pilot project that could pave the way for larger and more numerous coal-to-oil plants throughout the US.

Another proposed option is the harvesting of methane hydrates, which are frozen methane crystals found on the ocean floor and in arctic permafrost. Methane hydrates are extremely plentiful—estimates suggest that the global supply may be double that of all other fossil fuels combined. For this reason, methane hydrates seem like a great energy source capable of fueling unlimited growth for centuries to come. Predictably, it’s not that simple. Just as methane hydrates represent a tremendous source of potential energy, they also present a huge quantity of stored greenhouse gases. (Methane is more than 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.) A level of methane hydrate extraction capable of supporting the world’s energy needs would leak staggering quantities of the gas into the atmosphere, exacerbating the existing threat of global warming. Additionally, there is evidence suggesting that the extraction process could make seabeds unstable, resulting in habitat destruction and even giant tsunamis. Nevertheless, the US has earmarked $47 million for research into methane hydrate energy.

As for biofuels, we should look skeptically at any “solution” that Monsanto officially favors. Small-scale organic biofuels might be worthy of eco-activist support, but the biggest beneficiaries of industrial biodiesel are sellers of genetically modified corn and soybean seeds. Plus, those enriched by the establishment of biofuel markets in the wealthy global North are rarely local farmers but rather foreign mega-growers of palm and soya oils. In 2006, a Florida-based importer called—no joke—EarthFirst Americas, Inc. plans to ship more than 100 million gallons of palm oil-derived biofuel into the US from Ecuador. That’s more than the US biodiesel industry’s entire 2005 yield! In Malaysia, Indonesia and South America, where labor is cheaper, water more abundant and crop yields higher, the spread of soy and palm plantations is a leading agent of rainforest destruction.

Citing these and other untapped sources of energy, cornucopian capitalists adhere to the unwavering belief that scientific innovation and private enterprise will generate a solution to oil depletion. The public follows their lead, believing that—at the very worst—peak oil will mean buying a hybrid car or a new furnace. But many who have seriously researched this issue are confident that peak oil spells doom for modern metropolitan, growth-oriented economies. Fossil fuels are essential ingredients in the production of plastics, pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, electronics, computers, and even components of high-tech “renewable” energies like wind and solar power. During oil decline, mass-produced items that consumers now take for granted could quickly become luxuries, then relics. The entire capitalist framework—defined by global mass production and dependent upon a resource-hungry infrastructure—would likely collapse.

Peak Opportunity!

We don’t have to panic or lose hope in the face of this scenario. What might oil decline mean for anti-capitalist unrest and Earth First! agitation? Be imaginative! The heightened vulnerability of dominant institutions offers extraordinary potential for social insurrections, ecological uprisings and tactical ecotage. The advent of oil decline should embolden us to step up action to stop our culture’s worst oil-enabled abuses against the Earth, from mountaintop removal mining and forest clearcutting to industrial agriculture, suburban sprawl and resource wars.

In order to take full advantage of this opportunity to bring down oil-based civilization, we must work to minimize the ability of Earth-destroying industries to adapt to fossil fuel scarcity. This means defending wilderness and undeveloped areas—the Arctic Wildlife Refuge; coastal and offshore marine zones; highland hotspots like the Green River Valley and Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, Colorado’s Roan Plateau, Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front and the Otero Mesa in New Mexico—from new oil and natural gas speculation and extraction. Globally, it means doing more to collaborate with and support allies—from Colombia to Nigeria to Iraq—who are at the frontlines of physical struggles against neocolonialist oil exploiters and the militaries that shield them.

But our foremost task is to fight the ultra-dirty oil substitutes that industries are gearing up to implement. All of these will require huge investments of capital before they become economically viable. All will demand the creation of a completely new infrastructure before production and delivery can begin. Many will necessitate extensive legislative and diplomatic attention before they can be implemented in accordance with state, national and international law. And some depend upon significant adaptation on the part of consumers.

Every one of these new sources of energy is vulnerable at some crucial point. By studying the economic, political, legal, technological and even social requirements that these new industries will have to meet, we can proactively target them where they are weakest and prevent them from establishing a firm foothold.

By fighting to minimize civilization’s ability to weather the peak oil storm through the use of unsustainable “alternatives,” we can hopefully accelerate civilization’s collapse and preserve what remains of our planet’s ecological integrity. In the ashes of industrial monoculture, thousands of neotribal nomadic communities, autonomous ecovillages and bioregional confederations uniting them could bloom amid rewilded landscapes. The oil endgame might be our last opportunity for full-fledged Earth liberation. Will we seize it or let it slip by?

Acornista edits reclaimthecommons.net and peakoilanarchy.blogspot.com. This critter can be found dropping nuts and bolts of (purely poetic) resistance all over squirrel country this Spring and Summer. Despite favoring a “no civ” over a “new civ” outcome, Acornista believes that both sides should collaborate strategically together to take down oil civilization.

Anarchism and the Peak oil Argument

2006-03-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

[POA note: This is a very good analysis, albeit written in tortured and almost unreadable language. It's hopefully the beginning of a deeper conversation among anarchists about peak oil, but it's WAY TOO LONG to republish in full here. Check out the complete essay here -- and both there and at Infoshop.org, there's some interesting discussion in the comments sections.]

by Terry S
Published on March 21, 2006 at Anarkismo.net

An anarchist analysis of what peak oil means for the fight for a free society

Peak Oil is a subject that has not been addressed much in the Anarchist community and it's relevance to it. This is something I wish to discuss here and begin what is probably a very important debate and our response to it. Peak Oil is one of the major issues facing humanity and will result in great changes. It interlinks with many subject areas largely because of the ubiquitous role of energy in society. It is essential that Anarchists are aware of and understand this issue and it's far reaching consequences and are not caught off guard and are ready to take advantage of the changes that will occur to bring about a better world, rather than allow society to be led down the destructive path of capitalists and other dominating power structures.

Some of the references that I have seen of Peak Oil in anarchist writings appear to dismiss it as some sort of capitalist inspired shortage or something. The evidence does not indicate this at all...

The important consequence of this for Anarchists, at least in North America, is that it will be hard for the corporate media to hide the jolt from Peak Oil, although they will do their best. It is something that will hit most people. It is precisely in these sort of situations when people awake out of corporate / state induced slumber and may become receptive to an analysis of what is happening and begin to question the status quo...

What tends not to get discussed anywhere is the combination of Peak Oil, the Greenhouse Effect and the general trashing of the global environment. Chances are in the panic down the back-side of the Peak Oil slope, there might be a rush to all sorts of different fuels, like lower grade oil, tars, coal, wood and so on -- and the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of energy will actually be even higher. It will be a brave person who tries to stop this mad rush. Desperation will see environmental standards and safeguards consigned to the dustbin... The reactions are therefore likely to exacerbate existing environmental problems and if society and politicians continue their denial in the face of the facts, then the actions and "solutions" they take are likely to be reckless.

Mission Accomplished! Operation Iraqi Liberation (and Peak Oil)

2006-03-26T15:36:00.000-08:00

[POA note: Finally, someone states the obvious. But the other reason why the Bush regime wants to suppress Iraq's oil production, unmentioned by Greg Palast here, is so the USA has a readymade reservoir of oil available to be tapped after peak oil hits the global oil supply. Due to over two decades of artificially suppressed oil production, Iraq will be the last major oil producer to reach its geological peak of oil supply.]

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools -- By Greg Palast -- 25 March, 2006

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong. On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called, "Operation Iraqi Liberation."

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger.

The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel. There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping less of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price. It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it.

So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just love it. Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less.

I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon. Not so, gentle souls.

Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

The End Of Civilization

2006-03-15T00:14:00.000-08:00

[POA note: This is a very long essay, & we're reprinting only the first part of it here. The whole thing is a crash course in everything we've been learning & concluding about the rationale behind (the USA govt's manipulation of) current events for the past half year! So read it all, & pass it on...]

By Dave Eriqat
13 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org

I had a mild epiphany the other day: it’s not President Bush who’s living in a fantasy world, it’s most of his critics who are. I’m no apologist for Bush – I neither like nor dislike him. He’s no more significant to me than a fly buzzing around outside my window. So permit me to explain my reasoning.

People look at Bush’s invasion of Iraq and see a miserable failure. But a failure to do what? Democratize Iraq? Eliminate Iraq’s WMD arsenal? Reduce global terrorism? If those were, in fact, the reasons for invading Iraq, then the invasion would have to be classified as a failure. But what if the real reason was to secure Iraq’s oil supplies, perhaps not for immediate use, and perhaps not even for use by the United States? Then the invasion of Iraq would have to be judged a success, a “mission accomplished,” so to speak.

Or take Bush’s seemingly irresponsible handling of the domestic economy. How can any sane person fail to understand that cutting revenue while increasing spending will produce deficits, and that those deficits cannot increase in perpetuity? Sooner or later that accumulated debt has got to have consequences. Bush appears to be acting as if there were no tomorrow. But what if there really were no tomorrow, financially speaking? In that case, the reckless economic policies of today would not only be irrelevant, but might actually be shrewd. I mean, if one knows that he is not going to have to pay back his debts tomorrow, then why not borrow money like crazy today? In fact, if civilization is coming to an end, then why not use all that borrowed money to stock up on guns and vital resources, such as oil?

Now, I’m just one person. And I’ve been closely studying economic, environmental, and energy issues for only a few years. And I’m no expert. Yet I’ve come to the conclusion – and I don’t want to be a “Chicken Little” here – that civilization as we have known it for the last century is doomed. Our wasteful manner of living – heck, the sheer size of our human population – is unsustainable. Everywhere you look you can see signs of strain on the Earth, from spreading pollution of the air, water, and land, to disappearance of life in the seas, to depletion of natural resources. Something’s got to give. Things simply cannot continue as they have.

If I can see this, I would guess the United States Government, what with its thousands of full time experts, probably can too. Now, if you are the government (and I don’t mean Tom “I am the federal government” DeLay), and your experts tell you that civilization as we know it is doomed, what do you do? Well, for starters, you do not tell your population of sheeple. That would precipitate panic and result in premature doom, which would consume the government along with everything else. Above all, government seeks to survive, so you would maintain the facade of normalcy for the benefit of your population while you use what time you have left to prepare, as quietly as possible, for the inescapable future.

What will matter in this future? Commodities, principally energy, food, and water. Everything else is secondary. Money is far down the list in importance.

So how would you, the government, prepare for a future world in which commodities are king? By securing today as many of those commodities as possible. Hence, the U.S. government’s binge of military base building throughout the commodity-rich regions of the world. What would you not worry about? Money. The only concern you might have for money is to prevent its premature demise. Hence, the smoke and mirrors used to paint a pretty but false portrait of the economy. Some will argue that the government needs more than just energy, food, and water to survive. True, but by controlling the bulk of the world’s key commodities, everything else can be procured, including human labor and loyalty.

In preparing for the future demise of civilization you would also seek to increase the government’s power as much and as rapidly as possible. Why? To maintain control over those increasingly precious resources, and equally important, to control people – especially your own people – by force, if necessary. Viewed in this light, the government’s aggressive pursuit of power during the last five years makes perfect sense. Ironically, President Bush got it right when he reportedly referred to the now totally eviscerated United States Constitution as a “god damned piece of paper.” That’s really all it is anymore.

So what fantasy world are Bush’s critics living in? The fantasy world in which civilization can continue as it has in the past. That we can continue to improve the standard of living of everyone in the world if we just return to a more sharing and egalitarian way of life, like that which we enjoyed between World War II and the mid 1970s. This is a fantasy. The Earth has finite limits. We are finally starting to grasp that fact with respect to oil. But oil depletion is merely the first in a series of coming crises ensuing from the finite confines of our planet. The fundamental problem – and I’m not a Malthusian – is that there are simply too many people for the Earth to sustain. This is why fish are disappearing from the oceans, why the supply of oil is unable to keep up with demand, why the globe is being deforested, why animal and plant species are going extinct, why water wars are in the offing. Perhaps if people were wiser and more willing to share, and implicitly, less greedy, we could sustain the more than six billion people on Earth, but, alas, such idealism does not describe human beings.

The one thing that has enabled the human population to grow to the immense dimensions we see today is oil, the resource facing the greatest challenge from depletion. As the oil supply diminishes, in the absence of herculean efforts to use oil more efficiently and fairly, large numbers of human beings will die off. Before then, soaring prices for oil will probably destroy the economies of the countries most dependent on the stuff, if not the entire intricately linked world economy. This is what I mean by the end of civilization. Of course life will go on. But it won’t be anything like what we’ve been accustomed to. Life will be more like that of the Middle Ages, in which a few wealthy lords controlled all the resources and possessed all the power, and the rest of the people – the lucky ones, anyway – were veritable slaves under these lords. In many ways that state of affairs exists today, but it’s unseen by all but the most observant individuals. The future I’m talking about, though, is considerably more spartan than what the worker bees enjoy today.

I believe that what we’re witnessing today is the inception of a titanic and protracted competition for survival: between countries, between civilizations, between governments and their people. Moreover, I believe the Bush administration is the first to recognize this competitive future, which explains its fundamentally different – seemingly feckless – behavior compared to past administrations. Bush’s favored courtiers, which include corporations, are profiting today and will become the new nobility in the coming New Middle Ages.

Finish reading this essay here

* Radicollapse *

2006-03-10T02:30:00.000-08:00

A new discussion group called "Radicollapse" has entered the Internetherworld! The purpose? To "discuss strategies to seize liberation & RADICAL cultural change from COLLAPSE of centralized authorities, industrialism & corporate empire!"

From their info page:

This list emerged from desire to continue a discussion started at the 2006 Earth First! Winter Rondezvous in South Florida. Serious threats to large-scale hierarchical civilization include peak oil, climate chaos, ecosystem destruction, depletion of natural & mineral resources, agricultural unsustainability, and infectious diseases like bird flu. The crisis in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the speed with which local governing authorities can collapse, as well as the power of grassroots decentralized organizing to unite communities & successfully meet the needs of people. What can radical environmentalists & social justice activists learn from that situation, and others? How can we prepare ourselves & our communities for local collapse, and for wider systemic failure? What possibilities for liberation and radical cultural change might open up, that we could seize from the jaws of collapse? How do we fight reactionary groups or authoritarian / capitalist institutions who will exploit collapse for their own divisive & repressive purposes? Are there any circumstances (i.e. to stop global warming or end an unjust war) in which strategic action to accelerate or induce collapse may be desirable? These are some of the issues that we may want to discuss...

Folks can join their discussion by sending a blank e-mail to radicollapse-subscribe@lists.riseup.net or by going here.

An Open Letter on the Green Scare

2006-03-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

[POA introduction: At the Earth First! Organizers Conference last month in South Florida, which POA attended as eco-anarchist representatives from within the broad "peak oil awareness" movement, one major topic of concern and discussion was the "Green Scare" -- that is, the current wave of federal arrests targeting environmental and animal rights activists. As civilization collapses, we know that the State will continue to escalate repression against easy scapegoats, be they immigrants here, Muslims abroad, political opponents, or eco-activists. We know that while we blithely blog, the fascist State is conspiring to take over the Internet and put us all in massive new detention centers that they're building now. This important "open letter" describes how the State uses fear to drive us apart, and why ALL of our grassroots movements -- for peak oil awareness, for a free and democratic Internet, for peace and radical sustainability -- must come together to overcome their persecution!]

Please repost & print widely
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Memory Against Forgetting:
An Open Letter on the Green Scare

"The struggle of humanity against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Milan Kundera

Two weeks ago I found my name on a government list regarding the current "Green Scare," also known as the FBI's "Operation Backfire" against the grassroots ecology and animal movements. The mysterious "No Contact" list contains the names of many radical, wonderful people -- the people who perhaps would be the most outspoken in their support of those charged in this case -- and for some unknown reason these people are supposedly banned from communicating with the defendants. I have tried to find out exactly what the list means, yet I've found no solid answers, but instead a general sense of paranoia, confusion and unease. I've come to view this ridiculous list as symbolic of the whole Green Scare campaign. Check out the list here at Portland Indymedia.

The U.S. government excels at dropping down on people's lives like a ton of bricks, and of course that's what it has done with this witch hunt. In the last couple months, it has incarcerated or otherwise hammered many amazing radicals, thereby traumatizing them, their friends, families, and movements. Federal prosecutors have also set a new standard for potential sabotage penalties: life in jail plus, oh, say, about 300 years.

The personal reality for the people and their loved ones facing this repression is sad enough. But to make matters worse is the apparent success with which the government has isolated the accused from their comrades and movements. We need to look at how the state has succeeded, to a large degree, at cutting off each of these people from communicating with one another or their political allies. This isolation has surely caused some of them to break their solidarity with each other and cooperate with the prosecution.

Meanwhile, families and friends who aren't part of a movement may understandably want to look after their own first, given the potentially huge prison sentences hanging in the air. The dilemma being faced for the movements, each targeted individual, and their supporters, is essentially the classic "prisoner's dilemma." If everyone persecuted by the government sticks together, the end result will be better overall for *both* the group and the individuals involved. When their solidarity is broken and some cooperate against the others, the end result is worse overall for the group, usually much worse for the individuals who don't cooperate, and often not much better for cooperators.

The question is how can these individuals-sitting alone after arrest for 23.5 hours a day in cold cells and facing decades of jail time or even multiple life sentences-have the strength to resist? Our movements, while definitely having a major impact, are not strong enough to adequately protect those facing persecution. And as Americans, we are raised to be isolated individuals. It's a cultural imperative to look after Number One first, and then some of our family and friends after that. But outside of that little circle, there is hardly any solidarity in our society across political, class, gender, sexuality, or race lines.

I want to offer up a view of these people that differs from either the evil geniuses fiendishly plotting to terrorize America presented by one side, or the angelic innocents who have never had an angry political thought in their lives claimed by the other. Out of respect for these individuals and their legal situations, I want to be clear that I'm not speaking about anyone in particular. When I write "these people," I'm referring to those already indicted, subpoenaed or harassed, as well as those to come. The discovery evidence coming from the government apparently shows that the informant Jake named approximately 60 people in his crusade, so the fallout will continue to widen like ripples on water (depending, in part, how much we let it).

When I think of these folks, I think of people who put everything on the line for their beliefs. I see them courageously blockading forest roads in the middle of nowhere from crazed loggers and cops; hanging huge banners from daunting heights off bridges and office buildings; hiking miles into a forest and setting up tree-sits in the darkness, rain and snow; disrupting bear, cougar, whale, wolf and shark hunts, on sea and land and frozen lakes, all the way up and down the Pacific coast and interior; dodging rubber bullets and wading through clouds of tear gas to shut down the WTO in Seattle; splattering eco-villains with creme pies; locking their bodies down to every kind of object in order to stop every kind of destructive activity; typing away at a computer or photocopying fliers in the neon glow of Kinko's while everyone else is asleep; driving through the night to make it to the next basecamp or demo; and I see them laughing and singing around a campfire under lush old-growth forest canopies and star-swept desert skies.

I also remember people who thought holistically, who refused to be blinded by single issue activism, who saw the links between the exploitation of animals, of humans, of the Earth. People who realized that capitalism and authoritarian governments of all stripes are killing everything good, not just wilderness. The kind of people, ultimately, most dangerous to a repressive government and its loyal opposition of weak-kneed environmental "non-profit" corporations.

In this time, we need solidarity from other movements. And to get that solidarity we need to communicate that the accused weren't hairy Cro Magnons living in caves outside of Eugene, Oregon (or Tora Bora, Afghanistan, for that matter). Yes, they have been involved in vital ecological and animal struggles, but they've been involved in many other social movements as well.

I am proud to know many of these folks and call them my friends. I am proud of who they were then, and who they are now. They are neither martyrs nor victims. Yes, they are truly gentle and kind people as has often been remarked, but they are also fierce fighters who let their passion for justice guide them. Whether in jail, on home arrest, facing grand juries, or "believed to have fled the country," y'all are in our thoughts and our heartbeats constantly.

This persecution comes as a result of the effectiveness of the grassroots ecology and animal movements, and also because the state needs to have an "Enemy Within" to justify its growing fascism. The government is shifting, as predicted, from using the word "terrorist" to "extremist." It's only one step from there to "radical," or "subversive," or "agitator." And those words closely shadow the word "activist." This is a historical moment for our movements, like it was for the Industrial Workers of the World during the Palmer raids.

We've all heard the saying, "united we stand, divided we fall." Though it's become cliche, it's also absolutely true. Knowing it to be true does not make it easier to break this cycle of repression and take a leap of faith in trusting each other, but it is our only way out. Even in the darkest moments, we must remember the strength of our collective power.

The feds have stuck a knife into our movements, and we're bleeding. We urgently need to stem the flow and get back on our feet. I'm hoping this open letter will provoke thought, discussion, action, and engagement. Like memory against forgetting, let's remember who we were and what we accomplished before this ton of bricks dropped. Everyone has a role to play, so let's get it on.

With love for Rebel Cascadia,
Al D.

Peak Oil Anarchy Hits the Road, Dawg!

2006-02-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

Peak Oil Anarchy is bringing Gaia's gospel on the road! First stop was the National Conference on Organized Resistance in Washington DC, where we presented a workshop on "Peak Oil Activism: Radical Sustainability, Earth Liberation and Community Solutions." Then we're rolling down to south Floridian Everglades swampland for the Earth First! Organizers Conference & Winter Rendezvous, with detours en route in the Boone/Asheville area of Appaliachia and possibly the regional Rainbow Gathering in Ocala, Florida. The mountains here in western North Carolina are beautiful! It's tragic and sad that the same can't be said elsewhere throughout Appalachia, thanks to mountain-top removal coal mining that Mountain Justice activists are fighting.

For all ye newbies who we turn on to this blog while traveling, a few introductory essays are posted first. But if ye already know all that, there are many more interesting posts below on topics such as the collapse of industrial civilization, radical post-carbon praxis, class war & disaster capitalism, "the disintegrating authority of the governing classes," & other beautiful nuggets of eco-anarchist inspiration. And, don't forget to visit the sidebar links!

We'll be away for most of February, and won't be updating this blog, unless something amazing happens like the self-immolation of Dick Cheney or George W Bush admitting that the US of Empire has an "oil addiction." Oh, wait a sec, didn't he say that in the "State of the Union" address last week? OK, in that case, if he says another truthful thing this month, then we'll update the blog!!

When we're back in Squirrel Country this March, we'll be working to help organize another PetroCollapse conference, this time in Washington DC. Watch out, Republicrapitalists, geological limits to economic growth are breathing down your reign of lies and terror! And check out the upcoming Spring issues of Earth First! Journal and Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living for a couple of kick-ass essays we wrote that they're publishing.....

Are there any other activists in the house? Post a comment & let us know what you're doing!!!

Peak Oil 101

2006-02-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

a sober introduction
by Matt Savinar (from LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net)

Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the most widely respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world. They are rational, professional, not-at-all-radical individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global "Peak Oil."

"Are We 'Running Out'? I Thought

There Was 40 Years of the Stuff Left!"

Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole.

Oil is ever more plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, ever more scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.

In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode

The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

The effects of even a small drop in production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%.

While previous price shocks were only temporary, the coming oil shocks won't be so short-lived. They represent the onset of a new, permanent condition. Once the decline gets under way, production will drop by 3% per year, every year, or more. That estimate comes from numerous sources, not the least of which is Vice President Dick Cheney himself. In a 1999 speech he gave while still CEO of Halliburton, Cheney stated: "By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day."

Cheney's assesement is supported by the estimates of numerous non-political, retired, and now disinterested scientists, many of whom believe global oil production will peak and go into terminal decline within the next five years. Those stil inside the industry sounding the alarm the loudest are anything but your classic "chicken-littles." Andrew Gould, CEO of the giant oil services firm Schlumberger, recently explained the global decline rate may be far higher than previously thought: "An accurate average decline rate is hard to estimate, but an overall figure of 8% is not an unreasonable assumption."

An 8% yearly decline would cut global oil production by a whopping 50% in under nine years. If a 5% cut in production caused prices to triple in the 1970s, what do you think a 50% cut is going to do?

Other experts are predicting decline rates as high as 10%-to-13%. A near-consensus view 2005 was the last year of the cheap-oil bonanza, while many estimates coming out of the oil industry indicate "a seemingly unbridgeable supply-demand gap opening up after 2007," which will lead to major fuel shortages and increasingly severe blackouts beginning around 2008-2012.

The long-term ramifications of Peak Oil on your way of life are nothing short of mind blowing. As we slide down the downslope slope of the global oil production curve, we may find ourselves slipping into what some scientists are calling a "post-industrial stone age."

That may sound like "end-of-the-world" hyperbole until you compare energy production from all sources (fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables) to population growth, as legendary geologist Dr. Richard Duncan did in his article, "The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge." Dr. Duncan's research produced the following graph, which shows the amount of energy available per person on the planet from 1920 to 2060:

Ultimately, the energy-intensive industrial age may be little more than a blip in the course of human history:

Capitalism or a Habitable Planet?

2006-02-02T06:29:00.000-08:00

Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature.
The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change
Robert Newman Thursday February 2, 2006 The Guardian (UK)

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.

Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

On these pages we have been called on to admire capital's ability to take robust action while governments dither. All hail Wal-Mart for imposing a 20% reduction in its own carbon emissions. But the point is that supermarkets are over. We cannot have such long supply lines between us and our food. Not any more. The very model of the supermarket is unsustainable, what with the packaging, food miles and destruction of British farming. Small, independent suppliers, processors and retailers or community-owned shops selling locally produced food provide a social glue and reduce carbon emissions. The same is true of food co-ops such as Manchester's bulk-distribution scheme serving former "food deserts."

...Many career environmentalists fear that an anti-capitalist position is what's alienating the mainstream from their irresistible arguments. But is it not more likely that people are stunned into inaction by the bizarre discrepancy between how extreme the crisis described and how insipid the solutions proposed? Go on a march to the House of Commons. Write a letter to your MP. And what system does your MP hold with? Name one that isn't pro-capitalist. Oh, all right then, smartarse. But name five.

We are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of climate change and peak oil. Once we pass the planetary oil production spike (when oil begins rapidly to deplete and demand outstrips supply), there will be less and less net energy available to humankind. Petroleum geologists reckon we will pass the world oil spike sometime between 2006 and 2010. It will take, argues peak-oil expert Richard Heinberg, a second world war effort if many of us are to come through this epoch. Not least because modern agribusiness puts hundreds of calories of fossil-fuel energy into the fields for each calorie of food energy produced.

Catch-22, of course, is that the very worst fate that could befall our species is the discovery of huge new reserves of oil, or even the burning into the sky of all the oil that's already known about, because the climate chaos that would unleash would make the mere collapse of industrial society a sideshow bagatelle.

If we are all still in denial about the radical changes coming - and all of us still are - there are sound geological reasons for our denial. We have lived in an era of cheap, abundant energy. There never has and never will again be consumption like we have known. The petroleum interval, this one-off historical blip, this freakish bonanza, has led us to believe that the impossible is possible, that people in northern industrial cities can have suntans in winter and eat apples in summer. But much as the petroleum bubble has got us out of the habit of accepting the existence of zero-sum physical realities, it's wise to remember that they never went away. You can either have capitalism or a habitable planet. One or the other, not both.

[Newman is an English writer-comedian, currently appearing in his show "Apocalypso Now" (review).

He is also the author of "The Fountain at the Center of the World," about which Salon says:

The anti-globalization movement may not quite have found its Dante or its Homer in British writer Robert Newman, but it's found something, all right -- maybe its Theodore Dreiser. Newman, the author of two previous novels published in the United Kingdom, makes a splashy, messy American debut with The Fountain at the Center of the World, an ambitious and occasionally thrilling book that takes you from a NAFTA-impoverished Mexican village to the sleek corporate hallways of the City of London to the now-legendary street demonstrations at the World Trade Organization's 1999 Seattle meeting. (Review by Andrew O'Hehir)]

The Collapse of Complex Systems

2006-01-27T17:59:00.000-08:00

A hot dose of truth (By Dale Allen Pfeiffer)

We talk about energy depletion, global climate change, overpopulation and a host of other problems, but these are only symptoms of the true problems. In focusing upon these symptoms, we do not look at the larger problem and so are in no way prepared to begin seeking a solution. What is really happening is that a complex system is approaching a systemic breakdown due to flaws in fundamental conceptions. So long as we do not change our concepts of prosperity and economic growth, and so long as we do not take into account the true costs of environmental destruction and worker exploitation, the breakdown will proceed. In the meantime, we will simply be dealing with the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

It is the nature of complex systems to grow until fundamental flaws bring their downfall. Complex systems are rather susceptible to sudden, large scale change. They handle slow and subtle changes smoothly, but quick, large scale change does not leave a complex system an adequate opportunity to adapt. Complex systems are like heavily loaded diesel trucks on a downhill run: they require more braking distance than smaller vehicles. Sudden change tends to stress a complex system precisely where its fundamental flaws make it the weakest. Without adequate time to adapt to the change, the result is a systemic breakdown.

Beyond this, even if there were a perfect technofix for energy depletion and time enough to implement the fix, this would not solve the fundamental problem of which energy depletion is just a symptom. If we solve the energy problem, then the more basic flaws that infest the complex system we call our civilization will simply fester up in some other way. And the longer we put off addressing the underlying fundamental flaws, the more serious the symptoms will be, the more difficult it will be to resolve the true problems, and the more disastrous will be the systemic crash.

The civilization we live in is simply a complex form of ecosystem. As such, it obeys all the laws of ecology. Increased energy availability will result in population growth, given there are no other immediate limits to environmental carrying capacity. Already, the world population is almost twice again more than the carrying capacity of the planet without hydrocarbons. Should we find and implement the perfect technofix, population would continue to grow. The adoption of conspicuous consumption (otherwise known as the American lifestyle) by more and more people will result in graver problems. And the eventual population crash will be even worse.

And for those who say that a technofix would work if we also practiced conservation, I submit that it is impossible for our current socioeconomic system to conserve. For one thing, conservation could endanger the economic growth upon which this system is so dependant. And even if we did succeed in conserving energy in some ways, Jevon's Paradox implies that total energy consumption will still increase (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox).

This is why scientists and engineers have been warning us for over a decade not to expect technofixes. Our problems are too complex, and they result from basic conceptual flaws that lie outside of the realm of science and technology. It is too late for technofixes. Even if it existed, a technofix would only be a temporary fix. And, in any case, our efforts would be much more effective if we were to address the fundamental problems instead.

We must forge a new socioeconomic system not based on conspicuous consumption and constant economic growth. We need to begin restructuring our lifestyles, our households, our neighborhoods, and our communities. We need to adapt for self-sufficiency and sustainability. And while we are doing this, we need to evolve some new criteria for measuring prosperity, and a new respect for our environment and for each other. These are things that we can undertake at a grassroots level, and which will do the most good in the long run.

When we talk about peak oil, we tend to either hope for a technofix or head for the hills armed for survival. But when we realize that peak oil is only a symptom of the true problem, then we also realize that neither technofixes nor personal escape will really solve our problems. So let us state once and for all: the problem is not peak oil or energy depletion, nor global climate change, nor overpopulation. The problem is the collapse of a complex system due to fundamental conceptual flaws.

When we have focused upon the real problem, then we can begin to contemplate a solution on the grassroots level, based on the development of localized, sustainable socioeconomic systems that make the environment and community an integral part of the equation both on the social level and on the individual level. Then, and only then, can we begin to solve the problem.

Peak Oil and Permaculture: Ecotopian Fantasy or Effective Strategy for Survival?

2006-01-25T23:39:00.000-08:00

The Spring 2006 issue of the magazine Permaculture Activist is going to be devoted to peak oil. But in the meantime, debate is already raging about its value. Ran Prieur wrote:

On one level, "permaculture" is a racket, a copyrighted word for an exclusive system that you're not allowed to teach unless you've been through a bunch of classes that only rich westerners can afford, and then you make money by charging the same rates to more rich westerners. I think it's homicidal and ultimately suicidal that anyone with this kind of knowledge is holding it back. But in practice, outside the pyramid, there are a lot of people using the word "permaculture" for a whole mess of super-efficient food-growing techniques that are freely exchanged. Some of these techniques are revivals or reinventions of practices of indigenous people, some of them are improvements, and some are totally new. It's as if thousands of cultures from throughout history are now getting together and sharing their knowledge and figuring out how to grow food with the least energy and in the least space. The result is that we now have the knowledge to feed everyone in the world, even without oil. Growing your own food is a much more realistic survival strategy than foraging/hunting, because that requires a healthy ecosystem with lots of edible wild plants and animals. The more nature is depleted, the less we can survive by foraging/hunting, and the more we must survive by building up the soil and water locally, making our own tiny ecosystems and growing our own food.

In practice, of course, there's going to be a dieoff, but the number of survivors will depend on the breadth and depth of our knowledge of "permaculture," and your chance to survive will depend on the density of that knowledge in your local area.

But at Anthropik.com, Jason Godesky responded:

Permaculture is another ecotopian dream that shows a lot of promise at first blush. Its principles, and most of its techniques, are the same as tribal cultivators operating below the point of diminishing returns: horticulturalists. Ran repeats a common claim, that permaculture could feed the world's current population, even without oil, but that's not a view shared by David Holmgren, the man who innovated the modern incarnation of permaculture that claims to be so revolutionary and different from the horticulturalists it so closely resembles. In an interview with Adam Fenderson, Holmgren said:

The expectation that we can actually maintain industrial levels of agricultural activity—well, yes, it is possible in intensive gardening to produce more food per hectare than the most intensive industrial systems. But we're looking at mostly garden agriculture, where there's a net input of resources, compost materials, and it's very labor intensive. And most of that is actually in urban areas where people live. So garden agriculture can yield more per hectare than the industrial equivalent form, but with broad-acre agriculture systems you definitely need many more people and you need the infrastructure for people to be able to live on farms.

Permaculture--like all horticulture--faces certain limitations. Seedballs do not work everywhere. Terracing requires hillsides or mountainsides. Some techniques require rivers or streams nearby. Marvin Harris calculated horticulture to be, calorie-for-calorie, the most efficient mode of sustenance humans have ever tried, and I have no doubt that permaculture shares that trait. However, we cannot simply multiply the per-acre yield of a permacultural garden by the land mass of the earth to find how many people permaculture can support. Like horticulture, permaculture cannot be practiced everywhere. Moreover, it will likely still require a good bit of supplementing. For horticulturalists, that supplementing came from foraging.

The idea of permaculture as a means of rewilding, and repairing the damage done by agriculture, particularly interests me. But, what is good for me and mine may not translate well as a society-wide strategy. Where permaculture is possible, I have no doubt it will play a role. But that role is unlikely to be an easy swap-in replacement for monocropping agriculture. There is a ruthless efficiency to that practice that yields an absolute number of calories no sustainable practice could ever match. The idea that permaculture can support our current population is simply absurd, as Holmgren himself wrote in "Energy and Permaculture":

The most productive sustainable systems imaginable may be able to provide for the needs of five or even 10 billion people. However they would never sustain large-scale cities, a global economy, and Western material affluence even if all the conventional energy conservation strategies were to be adopted. This is a bitter pill to swallow for Westerners raised on the notion of material progress.

Not all areas are suitable for permaculture. It would be difficult to eke out a permacultural living in a desert, for example. Foragers do rely on a healthy ecosystem, but healthy ecosystems flourish all around us without our notice. The Kalahari is a flourishing ecosystem that sustained the !Kung and the Hadza, though to our eyes it looks desolate, dead, unforgiving and uninhabitable. Foragers can survive almost anywhere on earth, and however much a threat collapse may be to human populations, we are still at least a century from significantly threatening the survival of life on earth.

Permaculture is promising, but it is not a panacea. It won't work everywhere, and it will never support the billions of people who live by monocropped agriculture today. Ran suggested that only America would face mass starvation and cannibalism, but much of the world today is fed by America. Permaculture will no doubt save many who might otherwise have died, but to exaggerate its impact seems to be buying into the same ecotopian dreams that drove Brazil's disastrous experiment with ethanol, or Cornucopian responses to Peak Oil about economic substitutes and alternative energy.

Belittling foraging for its dependence on a healthy ecology forgets that permaculture also depends on a healthy ecology. Moreover, permaculture relies on a much more specific kind of healthy ecology than foraging. Growing your own food has always been a far more risky business than simply living like the lilies of the field or the birds of the sky. Permaculture's most promising possibility is as a companion to foraging, not an alternative to it. And while foraging will be possible in all those same places where people will be able to practice permaculture, there will no doubt be many other areas--most of the earth, I would venture--where permaculture will not be possible, but foraging still offers a life of ease and plenty.

phew! and there's more: the debate continues at village blog

What do they know that they are not telling us?

2006-01-23T23:51:00.000-08:00

There has to be a reason why the U.S. government is spying on its citizens. There must be a reason why laws are being enacted to put the U.S. on a police state footing. There's got to be a reason why the executive branch of government seeks more and more control of all aspects of governance, including shaping the views of the judiciary by placing jurists in high positions who defer to the executive at the expense of the influence of their own branch of government. And the fear of "terrorism" cannot be that reason.

Terrorism is a tool being used by the U.S. government to manipulate the American people. Of that there can be no doubt. 9/11 was the prototypical Pearl Harbor-type event that catalyzed American fears and made such manipulation possible, and the cover-ups by the 9/11 Commission and others have completely hidden from the American public the truth that their own government caused and allowed that dastardly event to occur. The media and the Congress have been completely complicit in this...

But why? What is at stake to allow Americans to be abandoned to murder, if not actually murdered by the thousands by their own government, just as the Naval personnel were allowed to be attacked by Japan in the original Pearl Harbor for purposes suited to the American government? The American government has never been honest about their complicity in the original Pearl Harbor, even sixty-plus years after the fact.

So why the current state of affairs? The best available information at present relates to civilization-shattering changes that lie in our immediate future. These involve the end of the era of cheap oil and the related phenomenon of global climate change. The end of the oil era will without a doubt coincide with the end of American predominance over the world, because American wealth and military power are directly tied to oil-derived wealth and control of strategic oil in an era that is on the verge of ending. Global climate change was predicted just this week by a major international figure in ecology to portend the end of human civilization and quite likely the end of the human species, and this outcome was stated by Dr. James Lovelock to be irreversible.

But still, what is the strategy of the U.S. Government to deal with these mega-crises? What do they know that they aren't telling us? What is the President and what is John Kerry and what is Ted Kennedy planning to do to save himself (themselves) at the expense of the American public at large? Was Hurricane Katrina a portent of the era of global climate change, when the poor are left to die first, and then everyone else left to fend for themselves?

What is the plan? What is the democratic way of handling a known mega-crisis? Shouldn't the public have a say in government strategy, or will the general public be victimized by their rulers and thus subject to the machinations of a police state, spying on their communications, abandonment in emergency settings, etc.?

There is something our government knows; there is something our government is planning; there is something about to happen that they are preparing for and not telling us about. It has little to do with foreign terrorism. Someone is preparing to survive at the expense of someone else. [by Stan Moore]

Hope for the Future?

2006-01-21T18:12:00.000-08:00

(POA note: As green libertarian socialists—i.e., eco-anarchists—we post this essay very reluctantly. We think that the left/right political divide is artificial & juvenile, and leftists who uphold it are propping up a decrepit status quo which needs to collapse. In other words, we are sympathetic to "post-leftist" anarchy. However, this essay is useful both because it attempts to awaken the left about the seriousness of peak oil and, more importantly, draws attention to the viability of grassroots, decentralized, community-based ways of proactively responding to "energy crisis." It's not another laundry list of sniveling bureaucrapitalist policy-fixes! Plus, it gives anarchist props to Food Not Bombs... ;-)

A Wake-Up Call to the Left!

It would seem natural for the left to take up the topic of resource depletion, and peak oil in particular. These problems are indicative of the failure of our current socio-economic system and the need for change. We have squandered our resources in a mad rush of rampant consumption. One would think that the left would have a field day with this. Yet the left has gone out of its way to avoid this issue.

For the most part, progressive voices and alternative media outlets have systematically played down the message of peak oil. Even now that it stares them in the face, they are reluctant to admit it and are making no organized attempt to deal with it. Instead, they have either been vehement in their denial of peak oil, or they have pointed to a techno-fix without taking a good strong look at the unlikeliness of such a solution.

This failure to discuss peak oil and its implications means that the field is wide open to the other side of the political spectrum. Without so much as an argument from the left, the right will institute their own solution to the problem: a militant grab for the remaining hydrocarbon resources, the opening of protected wilderness to exploitation, corporate welfare, a push for coal and nuclear power, and a restriction of liberties for the general public. The opposition will be stuck protest loudly-—-and futilely—against these tactics—something it has become very good at.

Yet the solution of the right is no solution at all, merely a vain attempt to stay the course and hold on to their position at the top of the heap. Ironically, a sustainable solution calls for many of the same goals which the left has long held dear. What is more, the public—as it wakes up to the problem—is frightened for their welfare and clamoring for real solutions. It is the duty of the left to answer the cries of our friends and neighbors with bold ideas and recipes for successful action. We must announce a new age of hope, compassion, quality of life, and freedom from the tyranny of corporate capitalism.

One way or another, energy depletion will spell the end of globalization and conspicuous consumption. Surviving the end of the oil age will require us to get to know our neighbors, to rediscover our local communities, and to become responsible stewards of our local environment. The path will be fraught with hardship. But if we begin preparing now, we can ensure that the future holds a world where the values of freedom, equality and justice are known and cherished, a sustainable world in harmony with nature, a world rich with community and quality of life.

First the left must wake up to the reality of resource depletion. We must loudly and creatively articulate our vision for the future, and we must act to bring this vision to fruition. We need artists—painters, musicians, and above all storytellers—to paint this vision for us, to sound it out and give it substance. We need a renaissance of art, thought and action to bring us out of these dark days of corporate capitalism, conspicuous consumption and media monopoly. As activists, we must learn that protesting is the least important of our activities. It is the duty of activists everywhere to organize locally and begin building the world of the future within the hollow husk of today.

12 Fun Activities for Activists

Community Vegetable Garden Lobby your communities and neighbors to allow you to plant up and tend vacant lots. If you live in an apartment complex with a suitable roof, lobby the management to allow you to build and tend planting boxes on the roof. This is an activity which can foster a strong sense of community between you and your neighbors.

Operation Johnny Appleseed Take a cue from that activist of American folklore and just start planting. Always save your apple seeds, pear seeds, peach pits, grape pips, cherry pips, etc. Save them and plant them wherever you find a likely spot. You can do this with any hardy perennial—fruits, roots and a select group of vegetables. You can even donate a little money and time to the purchase and planting of saplings, vines (grapes), bushes and brambles (blueberries and raspberries), or runners (strawberries). You could also take a tip from the American Indians and other native peoples and promote the propagation of beneficial wild plants. The study of permaculture lends itself to this activity.

Food Not Bombs This is perhaps the best single idea to come out of the Anarchist movement in the last fifty years. What is wrong with the Salvation Army, soup kitchens and other charities? For one thing, the majority of food charities expect something in return, usually a religious conversion. But there is a more basic problem with traditional charities: they are a charity. People who are well off are taking time to help the downtrodden. However well-meaning, those who come for the food are made to feel like beggars, beholden for the charity they receive and dependent on the charity of others. In Food Not Bombs, fliers are passed out announcing an open picnic at a local park, or some such place. The food is prepared ahead of time and laid out where everyone can serve her or himself. And then everyone sits down to eat together. Food Not Bombs picnics can be combined with educational tours to identify local edible plants. You could even show off the fruits of your free plantings or invite folks to help out with the local community garden. Food Not Bombs is solidarity, not charity!

Farmer’s Markets and CSA’s If you can locate a nearby Farmer’s Market or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), then patronize the former or join the latter. CSA’s are farms dedicated to serving their subscribers. For a yearly subscription price, members are given a percentage of the produce. Subscribers sometimes pitch in with the harvesting and other activities. The farmers usually accompany their produce with advice for food preservation. If you can’t find a local Farmer’s Market or CSA, then perhaps you should consider organizing one.

Community Transportation Networks This is an idea which is bound to become more popular as gas prices go up. Form a community car pool, not just for the commute to and from work, but to shopping centers and elsewhere. You could set up a local network to match up people who need to go to specific places at specific times, so that they can share rides.

Bicycle Co-ops and Bicycle Trails Bicycle co-ops could maintain a fleet of bicycles for the use of members, or for the temporary rental by non-members. The co-ops would maintain the bicycles, and perhaps collect them and return them to distribution centers. Bicycle co-ops could lobby local communities for bicycle trails, and perhaps donate time to the maintenance of those trails.

Support Local Businesses, particularly Co-ops How many local businesses are left in the wake of globalization? While supporting local businesses, press to ensure that those businesses are ethical and responsible.

Form Co-ops There is no end to the essential services which could be provided through co-ops. Co-ops give a community control over the provision of necessities.

Organize Community Activities Community entertainments such as barn dances, music and art festivals or community theatres not only provide entertainment, they provide venues where people can socialize. This is where you can meet like-minded folks who would be interested in taking part in the other activities mentioned here. These concerts and festivals also provide forums for local artists to reach an audience and/or inspire them with visions of where they can take their community.

Community Refurbishing Co-ops Such groups could help to remodel homes for greater energy efficiency, erect or refurbish community centers, or possibly erect shelters for the homeless.

Community Energy Production Co-ops Such organizations could provide local, community owned and maintained, low level energy production. Depending on local conditions, potential power sources could be wind turbines, solar cells, hydroelectric, or even geothermal (in select areas).

Ecovillages Here is the ultimate activity, an entirely self-sustaining community. This is the eventual goal which we must all direct our activities towards if we are to have a free, equitable and just society. That is, a society where the quality of life makes life worth living and where we can reside happy and contented to watch our children grow up in a positive and healthy environment.

This is the vision which the left can hold out to the public, a vision which cannot be matched by the right’s appeal to fear, anger and greed. It is time for the left to step up to bat. There is no need to fearfully deny the reality of resource depletion. And we have every reason not to leave the field of action to the right and confine ourselves to protest and reaction. There are hard times ahead, but there is no need to give up hope if we can stand together to meet what is to come. The left does have a positive vision to offer, but it must be trumpeted loudly and we must take the initiative. Failure to do so will lead to a dark and dismal future.

Demand destruction: who gets destroyed?

2006-01-17T00:36:00.000-08:00

a technical interlude

Economists who comment on the possible effects of world peak oil production love to ridicule those who make statements such as "demand at some point will exceed supply." Strictly speaking, those economists are right that supply and demand are always in balance. The variable that changes to make it so is price.

So an economist who accepts the possibility of an oil peak may still believe that the marketplace will allow us to make a relatively smooth transition to a new energy economy as the price encourages the development of alternatives to oil and as demand is destroyed. The latter phrase is often glossed over. But demand destruction is at the core of misconceptions by economists about the likely course of events leading up to and following an oil peak.

A smooth transition away from oil mediated entirely by market prices essentially assumes two things: 1) a very gradual decline in oil supplies after the peak and 2) a recognition in the market price that the peak is coming long before it arrives.

Both assumptions are called into question by Robert Hirsch's study of oil depletion curves in various countries across the globe. Hirsch's study indicates that any world peak is likely to have a sharp crest followed by a swift decline in oil production--anywhere from 3 percent to 13 percent per year if the historical record can be relied upon. Hirsch also notes that "in all cases, it was not obvious that production was about to peak a year prior to the event." This would help explain why the second assumption listed above is likely to turn out to be wrong as well. Market participants are unlikely to see the peak coming. This means that prices will only start to signal that alternatives are needed for oil long after it is too late to prevent tremendous disruptions...

The final argument on which the smooth transition idea rests brings us back to demand destruction. An economist will properly point out that people will stop using oil for some applications and will turn to alternatives where they are available. All that is true enough. But it is worth asking what they mean by "applications." In reality, it is the poor who will stop using oil for "some applications," both in industrialized countries and across the world. If alternatives are not available or are just as expensive, they will simply have to forgo the benefits of those "applications." That will help keep a lid on oil prices, but it won't solve the problem: too little oil for all the activities that power and feed 6 billion people.

With a sudden decline in oil availability it is almost certain that agriculture, which is heavily dependent on oil and oil derivatives, will be less productive; that many marginal factories will close in short order; that tremendous financial turmoil will occur in world markets; that many people will have to do with less heat or without heat at all; that skyrocketing prices for transportation will prevent commodities including food from freely circulating around the world, and so on. In short, there would be no smooth transition.

The heightened price of oil would certainly encourage conservation--i.e., demand destruction--but that conservation might come in the form of terrible hardship for millions and perhaps billions of people and possibly death for many. That would give a rather gruesome connotation to the notion of demand destruction. High prices would also encourage the development of alternative energy sources, but that's assuming that world society does not become so disoriented and chaotic that such efforts cannot actually be effected.

If one assumes that the oil peak is far off and that technology will allow us to make a smooth transition to the next energy economy (and solve other related problems that threaten to annihilate us such as global warming), then there is no need to worry about the effects of sudden demand destruction in the oil markets. But, if the peak arrives soon, then no bloodless abstraction such as "demand destruction" will be able to obscure the fact that it is people who are going to get destroyed, and lots of them. [By Kurt Cobb at Resource Insights]

Disaster Capitalism In Action: "The rich know that society is collapsing"

2006-01-15T03:09:00.000-08:00

a radical travelogue

I'm writing to you as I travel through places full of destroyed homes, uprooted lives, and the stark contrasts of wealth and poverty side by side...This week I'm participating in a fact finding delegation on poverty, race, neoliberalism, and the effects of Hurricane Katrina with a group of about 50 people including folks from the Philadelphia Independent Media Center, students participating in the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary, students at Columbia Univeristy's School of Social Work, and members of the National Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. I'm part of the media team and mostly working and travelling with a group of nine people, some of whom are good friends and others folks I'm just getting to know. We're here to talk to people, do our homework, and produce media that matters.

More and more I feel that the rich and powerful in our country are figuring out ways to benefit as things collapse. 9-11 was one example of this. No matter who you think did it, or how you think it really went down, the point is that a lot of people benefited and it wasn't you and me. The Bush government benefited by putting into place plans that had been in the works for years - the Patriot act, increased control and surveillance over massive sectors of the population, the squelching of dissent and questioning authoirty, suspicion of anyone that does. The owners of the military industrial complex benefited by the propanganda about a future of continuous war, successfully securing their piece of the pie for a long time to come. Anyone who has a stake in control, of people, capital, natural resources, or the national political culture, benefited from this disaster. While we're fighting with each other over scraps, the elite are laying in wait, playing their cards right, and figuring out how to manipulate the chaos. I've got to hand it to them - they know how to turn disaster into opportunity.

Writing to you from the South, I can say from my observations that Katrina and to an extent all of the natural disasters that happen here follow the same pattern. 'Natural disasters' aside (but after all how natural is global warming) there are sectors here that absolutely benefit from the suffering, the dying - people who have come to expect and in fact rely on periodic disasters for their very survival. Big developers, for example, rely on the crises that are wreaked on average people, and the destruction of their lives, to periodically make a killing on new construction. When we wonder why politicians never moved to remedy situations that they knew would produce disaster, we should think about these dynamics instead of wringing our hands at the sorry and unpredictable state of the world.

The conclusions are mind boggling but they are also real. We all know that people are exploited every day in their jobs, and their communities. But when we really tally up the death toll - from stress, exploitation, and oppression, it is plain to see that not only are the poor the first to die as victims of circumstance, they are actually the first to be sacrificed by those who understand what is coming, and how global economics really works. I want to suggest that the devastation I've seen - and I'm talking about Pensacola Florida, Ocean Springs and Biloxi Mississippi - we haven't even gotten to New Orleans- constitutes not an unfortunate tragedy exacerbated by inequality - but a sacrifice on the altar of global capitalism.

Neoliberalism. The dismantling of the welfare state. Every (poor) person fending for themselves. New markets can't last forever. The majority doesn't have enough wealth to buy everything that is being produced. But production has to continue and in fact it has to grow in order to increase profits. So how can profits increase? Use new technology to eliminate the need for human labor. Convince people that the state has no responsibility for human welfare and defund the social safety net. Start wars to control resources and create phantom enemies for people to attack when they become angrier about the collapse. Even when you've gotten all these projects under way, if you are rich and powerful - the Waltons, for example, who collectively control 100 billion dollars, (that's 100,000,000,000) you've still got to realize that you have a problem - surplus poor people. People who, for all intents and purposes, are in the way. In the way of 'development', in the way of the riches that the already rich are trying to secure in the only industries still experiencing growth - finance, insurance, real estate. What will happen to the neighborhoods that were leveled by Katrina? They happen to be sitting on prime real estate. How about that! A hurricane did what our government won't yet do - eliminate an unwanted population...

We've got to wake up and prepare for the long haul. The rich know that society is collapsing. They're banking on us being convinced that it's not. That way by the time we realize we need to be building the leadership and making the plans to take over, it will be too late because they will already have orchestrated the collapse down to the last pathetic violin. The global economic system cannot hold...So start thinking big, and strategic, because you're going to have to put a lot of the prejudices you've been nursing, against people who don't act right, or talk right, or think right, away. As things collapse around us, we have to learn our lessons and understand that these are Golden Opportunities for us as well. Opportunities to educate. Opportunites to organize, and develop leadership. We have to turn tragedy into triumph. (by Nijmie Dzurinko)

Why Peak Oil Awareness Is a Bad Thing

2006-01-03T00:51:00.000-08:00

Over at peakoil.com's discussion forum, thuja wrote:

I often read the posts here as something akin to-- "Why don't the powers that be (media, politicians, sheeple) get it about peak oil? The sooner they get it, the sooner we can start implementing plans to save us from the drastic problems that will ensue post-peak."

Whether you're a cornucopian hoping for a nuclear powered future or a Heinbergian eco-utopian hoping for back yard veggie gardens and wind power, there is a general desire to educate the masses about this issue.

While I generally agree, I have been having second thoughts while mulling over the implications of a true global understanding of Peak Oil. My fear is that we would see a great deal of panic and an immediate cry for intense energy production. This would most likely come in the form of expanded oil, coal and nuclear with a pinch of solar/wind development.

Intense energy production would lead to much more intense problems down the road (coal/oil=global warming; nuclear=waste/sustainability issues). There will soon be a hydrocarbon peak and eventually a uranium peak that will only put off our need to power down and reduce our population load on the planet.

So the more we educate, the quicker we bring on the fantasy that we can change fuel sources and go along our merry way. The longer we wait to try for the "energy Manhattan Project," the harder and more impossible it becomes to try and pull it off. We will then be forced with powerdown instead of trying to put off the inevitable for a couple more decades.

So should we stop praying for CNN and Newsweek to cover Peak Oil?

{POA response: When we first became peak oil-aware a few months ago, as eco-anarchist revolutionary activists, we grappled with this same question & came to essentially the same conclusion. That's why our goal is to educate the grassroots--ie, fellow eco-activists, anarchists, etc--and hope that the mainstream remains ignorant. In the spring of 2006, we have 2 essays that will be published in Earth First! Journal and Communties Magazine. The EF!J essay is largely about the environmental threat posed by "oil substitutes" like coal-to-oil liquefaction, industrial biofuels, and heavy oil mining. While a few politicians who understand peak oil--like our hero Roscoe Bartlett (see POA comment after "Highlights of the Denver ASPO Conference" below)--are against mega-industrial "solutions," most--like Montana's Gov. Schweitzer, who is attempting a crash investment to coal-to-oil--see it as justification for all sorts of awful "alternatives." We'll best off if the frog of civilization doesn't try to leap from the oil vat until it's too late--and if we are then forced to power down!!!}

A risk of total collapse

2005-12-22T02:55:00.000-08:00

We would be foolish to take for granted

the permanence of our fragile global civilisation

by Dylan Evans, Wednesday December 21, 2005, The Guardian

Is it possible that global civilisation might collapse within our lifetime or that of our children? Until recently, such an idea was the preserve of lunatics and cults. In the past few years, however, an increasing number of intelligent and credible people have been warning that global collapse is a genuine possibility. And many of these are sober scientists, including Lord May, David King and Jared Diamond - people not usually given to exaggeration or drama.

The new doomsayers all point to the same collection of threats --- climate change, resource depletion and population imbalances being the most important. What makes them especially afraid is that many of these dangers are interrelated, with one tending to exacerbate the others. It is necessary to tackle them all at once if we are to have any chance of avoiding global collapse, they warn.

Many societies - from the Maya in Mexico to the Polynesians of Easter Island - have collapsed in the past, often because of the very same dangers that threaten us. As Diamond explains in his recent book, Collapse, the Maya depleted one of their principal resources - trees - and this triggered a series of problems such as soil erosion, decrease of useable farmland and drought. The growing population that drove this overexploitation was thus faced with a diminishing amount of food, which led to increasing migration and bloody civil war. The collapse of the civilisation on Easter Island followed a similar pattern, with deforestation leading to other ecological problems and warfare.

Unlike these dead societies, our civilisation is global. On the positive side, globalisation means that when one part of the world gets into trouble, it can appeal to the rest of the world for help. Neither the Maya nor the inhabitants of Easter Island had this luxury, because they were in effect isolated civilisations. On the negative side, globalisation means that when one part of the world gets into trouble, the trouble can quickly be exported. If modern civilisation collapses, it will do so everywhere. Everyone now stands or falls together.

Global collapse would probably still follow the same basic pattern as a local collapse but on a greater scale. With the Maya, the trouble began in one region but engulfed the whole civilisation. Today, as climate change makes some areas less hospitable than others, increasing numbers of people will move to the more habitable areas. The increasing population will make them less habitable and lead to further migration in a domino effect. Huge movements of people and capital will put the international financial system under strain and may cause it to give way. In his book The Future of Money, the Belgian economist Bernard Lietaer argues that the global monetary system is already very unstable. Financial crises have certainly grown in scale and frequency over the past decade. The South-east Asian crisis of 1997 dwarfed the Mexican crisis of 1994 and was followed by the Russian crash of 1998 and the Brazilian crisis of 1999. This is another example of the way globalisation can exacerbate rather than minimise the risk of total collapse.

This would not be the end of the world. The collapse of modern civilisation would entail the deaths of billions of people but not the end of the human race. A few Mayans survived by abandoning their cities and retreating into the jungle, where they continue to live to this day. In the same way, some would survive the end of the industrial age by reverting to a preindustrial lifestyle.

The enormity of such a scenario makes it hard to imagine. It is human nature to assume that the world will carry on much as it has been. But it is worth remembering that in the years preceding the collapse of their civilisation, the Mayans too were convinced that their world would last forever.

· Dylan Evans is a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England www.dylan.org.uk

[POA comment: What interests us is not whether global civilization will collapse -- that seems inevitable -- but whether public discussion of the possibility makes it more of less imminent. Does the thought of collapse lead civilized people to have a crisis of confidence, a loss of faith, about its continuity, and spur them to cease investing in the complexity that sustains it? And to re-invest in simple forms of personal survival? Or does it frighten them into intensifying their investment in civilization and its self-perpetuating "stable" institutions: banks, stocks, bonds, college educations, suburban homes, gratuitous consumption? Which option accelerates colllapse, and which postpones it? Either way, it is fascinating to see one of the world's top newspapers editorialize about the likelihood of the collapse of modern civilization. One last question: Will the collapse be televised?]

The Plague Upon Eden

2005-12-16T02:08:00.000-08:00

Such a spectacular and magnificent entity is the planet we call Earth, a wonderment of natural beauty and symbiotic balance yet to be surpassed by the creative genius of humankind. It is a planet teeming with the colors of life, its oceans and continents gems of existence, an overabundance of beating hearts and flowing energy. The planet we call our only home is a living, breathing, dynamic cocktail of universal energy, for billions of years spinning and molding itself according to the laws and realities of science, adapting, shifting and shaping itself through the long days of darkened chaos and the unmistakable genesis of light, becoming, through the slow processes of evolution, the eventual home to millions of life forms, encompassing a wide range of periods, extinctions and eras of flourishing order...

Not satisfied with the level of pollution and carbon dioxide emissions spewed by the world today, blinded by the quest to further our comfortable, gluttonous ways, we continue pushing the increase of carbon, oil and gas consumption ever more, with the worst culprit of them all, the United States - which has five percent of the world’s population yet produces twenty-five percent of all worldwide carbon dioxide emissions - seeking to control all remaining gas and oil fields, all the while fighting the international community over the principles of alleviating global warming, its purpose the continued expansion of its voracious economy and by implication, its greenhouse gas emissions. Captured by greed, industrialized nations of the north seek to maintain comfort and privilege; meanwhile, developing nations seek the treasures and lifestyles of the north. Combined, both north and south will achieve only misery, meager subsistence and a future of dastardly consequences.

Today we are becoming aware what our manipulation of climate and atmosphere is accomplishing, yet the biggest beasts on the planet, China and India, have yet to fully enter the carbon dioxide delivery business. Slowly they are integrating their economies, and rapidly they are consuming vast sums of carbon, oil and gas, growing at tremendous speed, every day releasing greater amounts of gasses. When the day arrives, when both nations are at emission levels comparable with or greater than present day America, the planet will invariably be set on course to a future untenable and devastating, the future of humanity compromised and threatened. For fossil fuels are the devil’s excrement and slowly, yet surely, China and India’s addictions to these sources of energy grow, creating, though not yet visible, Hell on Earth, a place entirely of our own making, birthed through our ignorance and voracious plague-like appetite, rising from the only home we have to unleash devastation upon the human race.

If history proves anything, it is that humankind always follows a certain path, never deviating, always leading to death, destruction and the lack of vision. It shows that forethought is but an afterthought, that today is much more important than tomorrow and that securing the next two, three or five generations is not as important as realizing the immediate, short-term wants and needs of present-day humans. An alteration of cataclysmic proportions of both human psychology and enlightenment would be needed to reverse the seemingly inevitably drive toward self-destruction we are headed towards. Global warming must somehow be halted and contained, yet its momentum is only growing, resembling that of a runaway freight train. The destruction of the last vestiges of forest and jungle, including the last patches of animal habitat, must be stopped.

Humanity must learn to live in harmony with Earth and its living organisms, understanding the balance and synergy inherent in all of the planet’s mechanisms. Our actions must be understood for what they are doing, and a vision of the future must be implemented, choosing to save our children rather than condemning them to a life harsh, dangerous and full of misery. A new human enlightenment must rise from our collective conscious, transforming the way we live and behave, giving birth to an awareness of the interconnectedness of all living energies, whether organic or those mechanisms of the planet. Whether we heed the warnings or alter our destructive path in time to reverse the seemingly irreversible is entirely up to us, of course, yet, given our easily decipherable history and predictable psychology, the odds are not in humanity’s favor. History is the greatest witness to our inabilities, errors, demons and weaknesses.

If world history were a 24-hour clock, human existence would only comprise the last couple of minutes, yet in that minimal amount of time we have unleashed devastation upon the lands and creatures of the planet. In those few minutes we have gutted the lands of a once pristine terrain, claiming for ourselves everything and anything, whether living or not, that lies on or below the surface...We now find ourselves impotent to the forces, unleashed by us, which in the coming decades will rid Earth of the malignancy afflicting Her natural beauty, thereby returning balance and interconnectedness and normalcy back to a most beautiful Garden of Eden. [by Manuel Valenzuela] Read the complete essay

[POA comment: A strange reality indeed it is that our species has "evolved" into myopic assassins of Eden, converting the Garden's life-sustaining natural abundance and awesome beauty into figments of mechanized "wealth" designed merely to sate the sheeple momentarily as devastation rages on. If the creation myth that monotheists teach is true, and God really did expel our early anscestors from Eden's Garden, why did He not create a way to keep us from storming back in and tearing Her to shreds? What forgotten trauma does this myth conceal? Could it be that humans are not the plague on Eden, but our civilization is? Does the myth simply mask our own dispossession and annihilation of tribal and aboriginal cultures, who dared to reject our God and way of being? History proves the doom of all civilizations, but the vast majority of cultures did not choose to become civilized. Only in our age have we attained the Godlike ability to take doom to its ultimate ecocidal extreme...]

Visioning the Future -- Design Your Own Superhero!

2005-12-12T23:11:00.000-08:00

(from Transition Culture) In recent posts I have been chewing over the idea of visioning, and its central importance to Energy Descent work. As part of a presentation I am preparing for a talk next week, I hunted down various images from the 1930s of how people then thought we would be living today. One of the best is a character called Captain Future.

Captain Future (Wizard of Science) is clearly a guy you don’t want to mess with. He’s powerful and strong, with a funny gun thing that hopefully for him, given all the aliens he has to deal with, is more powerful than it looks... He has some great clunky space boots which presumably allow him to fly. He has a very tight fitting mask which amazingly doesn’t steam up, and little tiny leather pouches on his belt for carrying those essential knick-knacks you need in space (penknife? chewing gum?).

For us now looking back it is easy...to laugh at some of the visions of how our cities would be that were formulated around the same time.Each of us flying to work in our own aeroplane, living on the 300th floor, having hoverbikes. Talk of going on holiday to the moon, living in space cities. None of which of course has come to pass. The world’s energy constraints, even in the last 50 years of outrageous wastefulness and gluttony, have not allowed it. Similarly, when we look at visions for the future that are put forward now, we should be equally sceptical.

Will this scenario actually be possible in a depleting energy scenario, in an economic crash even? We have to change our dreams from being of moon cities, hydrogen economies, hovering cars and free energy machines to more realistic and achievable, and, I would say, desirable ones. Can we not get as excited about harvesting locally grown apples or building acob shed as we can about the idea of having hovering boots? It is a mark of how far removed we have become from nature and from reality that we imagine that we can get through energy descent with clean hands and just with the skills we have at present.

In the 1930s technology was a bright new world of possibilities and people had no sense of its limitations. Now we ought to be a bit more realistic. Most likely all the technology we will have available to us for our downward journey from the peak is already with us. As Kenneth Deffeyes said, “there is no time for scholarly research. There is no time for engineers to develop new machinery. We have to face the next five years with the equipment designs that are already in production. It’s not going to be easy”.

Our job as peak oil activists, permaculturists and post carbon folks is to create and diseminate a new vision of the future. Perhaps we need a new Captain Future. One equipped to lead the way down from the Peak. Of course it needn’t be a man, like our 1930’s traditional Captain Future. He/she would have a stylish hemp bodysuit with wooden buttons, and wellies. He’d have the brains of David Holmgren and the body of Desperate Dan, “capable of turning a compost heap at the flick of a fork and mixing cob faster than a digger”. She’d be a great poet and teller of tales around evening fires. He would know the plants of the hedgerows and the birds in the trees. He would make great wine and the worms in his worm bin would thrive. She would be able to make fantastic solar panels out of old bits in the garage (how come the A-Team never came bursting out of garages with great solar panels that they’d cobbled together instead of weapons and tanks?) and be capable of inspiring her neighbours to mulch their lawns. He’d be great with kids and would cruise to any emergency on his pushbike.

My sense is that our success in dealing with the next few years is going to depend in no small part on our finding the Captain Future in each of us. We have nothing to lose from that, and everything to gain. When we think about the future, the old saying keeps returning to me, “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it”.

Please feel free to use this page to share your own visions of what a new Captain Future might look like. I’ve set out my mental picture of him/her, let’s hear yours. Descriptions, drawings, poems, all are welcome. Lets build a new superhero for extraordinary times!

Disintegrating Authority of the Governing Classes

2005-11-24T22:07:00.000-08:00

And now for a comforting idea...

"Amid the smoke and stench of burning careers, Washington feels a bit like the last days of the ancien régime. As the world's finest democracy, we do not do guillotines. But there are other less bloody rituals of humiliation, designed to reassure the populace that order is restored, the Republic cleansed. Let the perp walks begin. Whether the public feels reassured is another matter.

"George W. Bush's plight leads me to thoughts of Louis XV and his royal court in the eighteenth century. Politics may not have changed as much as modern pretensions assume. Like Bush, the French king was quite popular until he was scorned, stubbornly self-certain in his exercise of power yet strangely submissive to manipulation by his courtiers. Like Louis Quinze, our American magistrate (whose own position was secured through court intrigues, not elections) has lost the "royal touch." Certain influential cliques openly jeer the leader they not so long ago extolled; others gossip about royal tantrums and other symptoms of lost direction. The accusations stalking his important counselors and assembly leaders might even send some of them to jail. These political upsets might matter less if the government were not so inept at fulfilling its routine obligations, like storm relief. The king's sorry war drags on without resolution, with people still arguing over why exactly he started it. The staff of life--oil, not bread--has become punishingly expensive. The government is broke, borrowing formidable sums from rival nations. The king pretends nothing has changed. The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the governing classes..."

(by William Greider) Published in Nov. 21 issue of The Nation

Hayduke speaks: Reality, what a concept!

2005-11-21T22:51:00.000-08:00

"It's not the writer's task to answer questions, but to question answers. To be impertinent, insolent, and, if necessary, subversive." -- Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey died in 1989, so he missed much of what makes up our world today: the multi-generational invasion and occupation of the Middle East by the United States government (their government, not my government), the nightmarish return and ascendancy of the Neocons, the abdication of our national press and their willing adoption of the fawning role of stenographers to power. Ed warned us, those few who read his fiction and essays; he gave us a glimpse of what was, and still is, to come. We live in a time when unreality ultimately clashes with reality. Since World War II, those who have come to control the United States government (their government, not my government) have dragged us all into a world of unreality, in which television news- ertainment substitutes for news and informed commentary.

At first, it seemed benign, a pitiful distraction that attracted more and more gaping moths to the flame of TeeVee entertainment. All too soon, the distinction between news and entertainment, between reality and make believe, between fact and propaganda, became forever blurred. As advertising built a fantasy of a meaningful life based on unlimited consumption, all content presented on TeeVee become indistinguishable from the commercial unreality. News stories, shortened to meaningless sound bites, were spun to undergird the corporate reality of consumer capitalism. National elections became just another fantasy extravaganza on the tube, a foregone conclusion in the eastern US while the west waited to vote. Democracy died in the scintillating electrons of the TeeVee phosphor tube.
Now we've suddenly discovered reality creeping in around the edges of the popular broadcast fantasy. Computer game wars really do kill real people, sons and daughters, husbands and fathers, children and children and children.

Global climate change is not a fantastic special effects movie advertised on wide-screen TeeVees, but a very real, long-term change that is melting the ice pack of Greenland, displacing indigenous peoples the world over, and, worst of all, raising food prices for affluent Americans.

Rising gasoline prices inconvenience the commuting public, hinting at the ultimate energy price rises to come as the reality of Peak Oil makes itself inescapably felt in the basic resource that has served as the basis of what we optimistically call our "civilization."

Reality is what hangs around when you stop believing in it... and when the TeeVee is turned off.

Michael
Leona Gulch
pacific Plate
hayduke (at) rattlebrain (dot) com

FINAL EMPIRE

2005-11-16T23:14:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER 2: THE END OF CIVILIZATION

If the planet and the human species are to survive we must create paradise. We must restore the life of the earth. The only way that the planet can heal itself is for the soils of the earth to be restored along with the ecosystems that will maintain those soils. To do this, human culture must undergo transformation from a culture of suicide and immediate gratification of immature impulses for material goods into a culture focused on life and wisdom, a culture of paradise.

We must get below the threshold of consciousness of civilization and examine the real basis of the life of the earth - the soil. All of us have to struggle to throw off the mind conditioning that we have received in civilization. Our reality molding would have us believe that there are environmental problems such as toxic chemicals, radiation and acid rain. The fact is that our life crisis began with empire/civilization. The environmental crisis began thousands of years ago, when the Han Chinese began to destroy the vast forests of China and when the Indo-Europeans began to overgraze the vegetation and exhaust the soils of central Asia. For two to three million years humans lived on the planet in a stable condition; then suddenly with the cultural inversion to civilization, the earth began to die. Civilization is the environmental crisis and the loss of topsoil is our measure of the etiology of the disease.

The materialistic values of civilization teach us that the accumulation of wealth is progress. The material wealth of civilization is derived from the death of the earth, the soils, the forests, the fish stocks, the "free resources" of flora and fauna. The ultimate end of this is for all of the human species to terminate in giant parasitical cities of cement and metal while surrounded by deserts of exhausted soils. The simple polar opposites are the richness and wealth of the natural life of earth versus the material wealth of people living out their lives in artificial environments.

We are all detribalized natives of the Pleistocene family......But the crisis of our era offers us paradise. It offers us the opportunity to shed the tensions and dangers of civilization so that we may create a new world. Creating new culture is not an activity of gratification deferred in pursuit of a distant goal but of immediate increase in the satisfaction of life. Rather than watching helplessly as victims of historical trends, trapped in a boring and dangerous mass culture, people who step out and begin to create answers are living "real life." There are hundreds of thousands involved in wholistic health. There are tens of thousands of people already in the United States who are living in intentional communities and permaculture projects and bioregional groups are wide-spread.

Our task is to recreate paradise. There is no other way. We must restore the life of the earth and in order to do that we must have a benign, creative and potentiative culture. When we create nurturing culture, our children will have more opportunity than the lock-step of civilization, in which to further the human potential. We will become more creative, more conscious and more nurturing of life.

We are forced to choose a life of beauty
and a life that aids the whole.

We are embarking upon a transformative course, the inversion of the values of empire. When communities exist at the top of watersheds and the water running from them, downhill, is pure, then we know that a cosmically resonant human social pattern exists.

No studies are necessary, no protracted discussions are needed. Human society is out of balance with the life of the earth and human society needs to regain balance. If our daily efforts are substantially directed toward regaining that balance then we are on the path to paradise.

Click here to read the book (by William Kotke)

IF YOU EVER READ A SINGLE BOOK, READ THIS ONE!!!

Quake

2005-11-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

Quake
by: Brenna Sahatjian

The malleable stuff of our speech,
conforming blob nestled in ravenous teeth
There's a curtain of language, it's behind it we must reach
Into that miasma of waves that saturates the air,
that transmits the decay
It was in reception, laid on tectonic plates,
that a sore vigilante did in me awake
Sat up in the dark screaming, "for something sacred's sake...
Won't you lie on your land and move her to quake?

The variable stuff of our sphere,
the changing arrangement of all we deem real
There's a curtain of color, let's grope through it to feel
The soft warm glow of being,
the melting of falsehoods we build just by seeing
But a panicked mob running makes rhythms that sing,
beseeching beneath where they place treading feet
Like an ultrasound's murmuring baby's heartbeat.

The terrestrial witness becomes still,
and that we exist, like a wind, she can feel
She's drenched in our waves by each gust of this breeze
Which blows with the rhythms of brainwaves in sync,
with the waves of denial, of trust being breached
These things we call words, oozing, wet, awkward speech
Lie on your land and breathe hard to beseech
that the curves of this woman will turn
That she'll stir in her slumber, that we'll feel a soft squirm
And get jostled into a mess we can rebuild more pure
In a catastrophe of rebirth, in a revolution of earth.

Listen to the song

Long live riot folk!

Disaster, Fun or Solution?

2005-11-07T23:57:00.000-08:00

Click twice to see picture full-sized!!

Which future are you creating?

Ripping Up Asphalt and Planting Gardens

2005-10-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

Nominated by POA for "Best esssay of the year!"

(by Derrick Jensen) I don't see declining oil extraction as a problem. I see it as a wonderful and necessary thing I wish would have happened a long time ago.

This culture is killing the planet. It must be stopped. We evidently do not have the courage to stop it ourselves. The natural world will stop it for us. I think suburbs have no future. Nor do cities. They are inherently unsustainable...

Civilization is going to crash, whether or not we help bring this about. If you don’t agree with this, we probably have nothing to say to each other... We probably also agree that this crash will be messy. We agree further that since industrial civilization is systematically dismantling the ecological infrastructure of the planet, the sooner civilization comes down (whether or not we help it crash) the more life will remain afterwards to support both humans and nonhumans.

If you agree with all this, and if you don’t want to dirty your spirituality and conscience with the physical work of helping to bring down civilization, and if your primary concern really is for the well-being of those (humans) who will be alive during and immediately after the crash, then, given, and I repeat this point to emphasize it, that civilization is going to come down anyway, you need to start preparing people for the crash, ripping up asphalt in vacant parking lots to convert them to neighborhood gardens, teaching people how to identify local edible plants, even in the city (especially in the city) so these people won’t starve when the proverbial shit hits the fan and they can no longer head off to Albertson’s for groceries...

We need it all. We need people to take out dams, and we need people to knock out electrical infrastructures. We need people to protest and to chain themselves to trees. We also need people working to ensure that as many people as possible are equipped to deal with the fall-out when the collapse comes. We need people working to teach others what wild plants to eat, what plants are natural antibiotics. We need people teaching others how to purify water, how to build shelters.

Further, resistance needs to be global. Acts of resistance are more effective when they’re large-scale and coordinated. The infrastructure is monolithic and centralized, so common tools and techniques can be used to dismantle it in many different places, simultaneously if possible.

By contrast, the work of renewal must be local. To be truly effective (and to avoid reproducing the industrial infrastructure) acts of survival and livelihood need to grow from particular landbases where they will thrive. People need to enter into conversation with each piece of earth and all its (human and nonhuman) inhabitants...

The work we face includes both destruction and creation. I'm thinking, for example, about a cell phone tower behind the local Safeway. Cell phone towers kill between five and fifty million migratory songbirds per year just in the United States. The cell phone tower needs to come down. It is contiguous on two sides with abandoned parking lots. Those lots need to come up. Gardens can bloom in their place. We can even do our work side by side.

Read complete essay (by Derrick Jensen)

Jumping From the Sinking Ship of Empire: Vermonters Move to Secede From USA

2005-10-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

James Howard Kunstler, author of the book about Peak Oil The Long
Emergency, will be the keynote speaker at The Vermont Convention
on Independence to be held in the House Chamber of the State House in Montpelier, VT on Friday, October 28^th, 2005. Sponsored by the Second Vermont Republic, the convention, which will begin at 9 am and conclude at 5 pm, is open to the public and free of charge. This historic event will be the first statewide convention on secession in the

United States

since North Carolina voted to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861.

Organizers of the convention say it has two objectives: First, to raise the level of awareness of Vermonters of the feasibility of independence as a viable alternative to a nation which has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable. And second, to provide an example and a process for other states and nations which may be seriously considering separatism, secession, independence, and similar devolutionary strategies. The Second Vermont Republic describes itself as "a peaceful, democratic, grassroots, libertarian populist movement committed to the return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic as it once was between 1777 and 1791."

Earlier this year, Vermont secession activists published their opening salvo, the Middlebury Institute Letter. It declared: "We believe that, of the options open to those who would dissent from the actions and institutions of a government grown too big and unwieldy and its handmaiden corporate sponsors grown too powerful and corrupt, the only comprehensive and practical one is some form of separatism. Exploring this option is not a step to be taken lightly, because there are established forces that will hamper and resist, and yet it is a legal and viable enterprise, squarely in the American tradition...

"Moreover, the accumulating signs point to a series of major crises that will seriously disrupt and may even destroy the American system in the near future. These include economic disruptions in the wake of global “peak oil” production before 2010, deterioration of the power of the dollar through mounting and uncontrollable national debt and trade imbalances, continued degradation of vital ecosystems on which the nation depends, climate change and severe weather causing widespread devastation of coastal areas, extended use of military force worldwide leading to increased terrorism and the reinstitution of the draft, [and] judicial takeovers at the Federal level by rightwing ideologues capable of altering fundamental legal rights... Those who want to absent and cushion themselves from suchlike devastations would reasonably want to explore ways of removing their communities and regions from dangerous national political and economic mechanisms that are incapable of reform." Read the complete Middlebury Institute Letter

Help create a worldwide secession network: secession.net

Ecological Collapse, Trauma Theory and Permaculture

2005-10-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

The nature of ecological and civilizational collapse is quite similar to the effects of trauma on human beings. Ecological collapse is in fact an ecosystem-wide form of trauma. Obviously, the difference in scale between individual human beings and entire ecosystems and planetary-wide ecological and climatological processes creates differences, but the similarities are striking.

Furthermore, ecological trauma precipitates human trauma. As the inhabitants of ecovillages and other forms of intentional community are painfully aware, successful permaculture design must incorporate an understanding of human psychology. At the same time that society will be coping with a declining availability of energy and the collapse of important ecosystems, we must also cope with the psychological disintegration of human beings and the collapse of human societies. Healing one requires healing the other, too...

As a trauma survivor heals, she breaks out of her isolation and begins to reengage with the world. Finding a survivor mission, a renewed sense of meaning and purpose to her life, is often vitally important to recovery. As activists, our survivor mission is nothing less than the establishment of a new human culture based on harmony with the rest of nature. Many of us have dedicated our lives to this cause. Our experiences of ecological trauma have given us a desire to prevent further suffering.

Permaculture was designed to create that “soft landing” that we hope will happen. We do not know what will come after us, but while we are here we will make every attempt to heal the world on its way down — together.

Read complete essay (Lisa Rayner, Flagstaff Post Carbon Outpost)

WAITING FOR THE APOCALYPSE: The Ideology of Collapse and the Avoidance of Revolutionary Responsibility

2005-10-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

In speaking of revolutionary responsibility, I am speaking of willingness to place oneself on the line, to stake one’s life on the possibility of a revolutionary rupture that we create. This perspective stands in absolute opposition to any form of apocalyptic faith including the ideology of collapse. It means that our practice of revolt starts from our own dream of the world we desire and our own understanding of how the present world stands in our way, an understanding that we sharpen through analysis and critique in order to better attack this world. Because if we start in this way, from ourselves and our most revolutionary desires, we will see the need to stretch out our hand, grasp every weapon that we can truly make our own and go to the attack against this civilization based on domination and exploitation. Because there is no guarantee that this monster will collapse on its own. Because even if it eventually does so, in the meantime we would be living in mediocrity and misery. Because only by learning to actively create our lives for ourselves, developing ways of living that are absolutely different from those that we have experienced up to now – something that can only be learned in revolt – will we be able to guarantee that the end of this civilization will not lead to even worse horrors. Because this is the meaning of taking responsibility for one’s own life here and now, this is the meaning of revolutionary responsibility.

Read complete essay (from Killing King Abacus)

Report from 2nd US Conference on Peak Oil & Community Solutions

2005-10-09T03:37:00.000-07:00

Yellow Springs, Ohio -- More than 350 people from 39 states and five countries gathered here in late September with about 100 area residents to learn how to prepare at the local level for the coming steep decline in global oil production. This permanent decline will follow an all-time high in production, known as peak oil, which will require developing local and sustainable economies, local food systems, and "eco-village" communities, participants at the Second U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions were told.

Read complete article (by Megan Quinn)

Relocalize Now! The Post-Carbon Institute Organizes the Post-Petroleum Future

2005-10-09T03:20:00.000-07:00

Our research suggests that the key response to energy peak is relocalization -- that is: rebuilding the culture, economics, and governance of our communities such that our essentials (e.g., food, water, energy) are produced locally for local consumption. Considering energy peak along with rest of our problems -- ecological and otherwise -- we collectively are confronted with an truly awesome challenge. You are one of a small fraction of people worldwide aware of our collective predicament. Bearing this knowledge on one's own is heavy burden. If we are to have any chance of creating a future worth living, we must work together to build a global and locally grounded movement.

Our most important outreach initiative, the Outpost Program, is working with groups of concerned citizens to prepare their community for an energy constrained future. These groups are Outposts in the sense that they are community-based extensions of the Post Carbon Institute, operating autonomously while receiving guidance and electronic infrastructure from the Institute. Outposts work cooperatively in their local community with local government, business, NGOs, and educational institutions to put theory about living with less hydrocarbons into practice while sharing knowledge and experiences with the global network of people working on relocalization. Projects taken on by Outposts are experiments for a hydrocarbon constrained future; we are almost as eager to find out what doesn't work as what does. The outpost program offers a way for you to collaborate with people in your community and in a worldwide network to raise awareness and work for a better, more local future. Should you decide to take this on, our intent is to support you in making an immediate positive difference in your community and having an enjoyable and rewarding experience. It won't be easy, but the potential upside -- a future worth living for ourselves, our children and life on the planet -- merits our every effort and deepest commitment.

Learn more about the Post-Carbon Institute's Relocalization Network

A Community Solution to Peak Oil: Interview with Megan Quinn

2005-10-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

Megan Quinn is the Outreach Director of Community Service, Inc., a non-profit organization founded in 1940 that has advocated for small, local communities as the most fulfilling, healthy way to live. It's lastest program, The Community Solution, seeks to bring about the re-emergence of the small community and a more agrarian, low energy-use way of life, as the solution for "Peak Oil."

Aric McBay: How do you think Peak Oil is going to play out in the world over the next couple of decades? Could you give us a possible scenario? What do you hope will happen? What do you worry will happen?

Megan Quinn: The next few decades will be a discontinuity in the course of human civilization and human evolution. From the start of the industrial revolution, humans have extracted greater and greater amounts of fossil fuels from the ground. (In turn, we have released greater and greater amounts of fossil fuels into the air as they are burned.) Yet over the course of the next few decades, we will reach the point at which the most fossil fuels will ever be extracted. From that point on, we will extract fewer and fewer amounts of fossil fuels until it takes more energy to extract the fossil fuels than they provide, or we decide that we will no longer extract them.

My hope is that citizens of the world will realize what is happening when Peak Oil occurs and decide to relocalize their economies and societies to adapt to this new reality of declining fuel availability. Cooperation is required to create this new world of small, sustainable, self-reliant communities. Competition over the dwindling sources may bring us to the brink of extinction.

Read complete interview

Maintaining And Creating Egalitarian Social, Economic and Political Structures After the Collapse

2005-10-09T01:54:00.000-07:00

That we are approaching the collapse is largely beyond debate. It is unnecessary to give a detailed examination here of the factors by which the collapse may come about. My purpose, instead, is twofold:

1. To explore the form the collapse may take; that is, to speculate on what we will actually experience as global industrial civilization crumbles, and more importantly

2. To explore how we may hope to create and perpetuate egalitarianism in a state of civilizational collapse.

We have two questions ahead of us: What do we want, and What do we NOT want. For me, and I think for most of you, what we want is a better culture—an anarchic, tribal, egalitarian culture. What we don’t want is to continue to be subjugated by civilization.

We’re approaching a critical period. A point at which there will be no more middle-road—a point at which, if we survive, we will survive either as free participants in established egalitarian societies or as a new class of serfs. We must know what we want, and we must have the will and the ability to fight fiercely for it—without losing it in the process of fighting for it.

Read complete essay (by Steve Thomas, The Anthropik Network)

Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, Interview With Richard Heinberg

2005-10-09T00:59:00.000-07:00

You know we have composed symphonies, we’ve created magnificent artwork, we’ve created all kinds of amazing communication technologies and information storage technologies, we’ve learned a heck of a lot about our world. We’ve learned about physics and astronomy and biology, evolution and so on. It would be a terrible shame for all of that to be lost and destroyed if our civilization comes to what may be its inevitable conclusion, after all, we wouldn’t be the first civilization to have collapsed as a result of resource consumption and depletion. So what I am advocating in that last chapter of the book is the creation of communities of cooperation, mutual survival and mutual aid, communities that would be of service to the surrounding society, providing them with knowledge, means for conflict resolution, with inspiration, with seeds for food production, practical skills, teaching practical skills and so on. Communities of service that would be supported by the surrounding population, because they would be providing these necessary survival skills and services. I think the time to start building those cooperative service communities is now, before the crunch hits.

There already are a number of these kinds of communities around the country and around the world. I have visited a number of them, and I admire unreservedly the people who are making the considerable effort to devote their lives to this task. Some of them call themselves eco-villages, and the people there have to be generalists—they have to know about food production and home building and so on—but I have to say that the people that I have met who are devoting themselves to this way of life are generally pretty optimistic and happy even though they realize the dire state that the world as a whole is in. At least they have the satisfaction of knowing that they are doing the best thing that they could possibly do to help what’s best about us to survive for the next generations.

Read complete interview

How to Survive the Crash and Save the Earth

2005-10-09T00:35:00.000-07:00

1. Abandon the world.
2. Abandon hope.
3. Drop out.
4. You are here to help.
5. Learn skills.
6. Find your tribe.
7. Get on some land.
8. Save part of the Earth.
9. Save human knowledge.

My focus is direct positive action for the biosphere: adopting some land, whether by owning or squatting or stealth, and building it into a strong habitat: slowing down the rainwater, composting, mulching, building the topsoil, no-till gardening, scattering seed balls, planting trees, making wetlands -- a little oasis where the tree frogs can hide and migrating birds can rest, where you and a few species can wait out the crash.

Humans have the ability to go beyond sustainability, to live in ways that increase the richness of life on Earth, and help Gaia in ways she cannot help herself. This and only this justifies human survival.

It requires a new set of skills. A good place to start is the permaculture movement. Sadly, in the present dark age the original books are all out of print and rare, and classes are so expensive that the knowledge is languishing among the idle rich when it should be offered free to the world. But the idle poor can still find the books in libraries, and many of the techniques are simple. What it comes down to is seeing whole systems and paying attention and innovating, driven by the knowledge that sustainability is only the middle of the road, and there's no limit to how far we can go beyond it.

Read complete essay (by Ran Prieur)

Beyond Wilderness: Earth as a Garden

2005-10-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

As researchers examine the Amazon more carefully, it appears that huge areas contain not only wild plants, but have been stocked with people-friendly cultivars of useful species. More and more, it looks as if the Amazon, like much of the Americas, was a carefully cultivated garden before the Europeans showed up and abused it into a thicketed wilderness. It appears that our idea of wilderness—black forest so dense you can barely walk, where people "take only photographs and leave only footprints"—is a notion burned into our psyches during an anomalous blip: the first two centuries following the Mayflower, in which the gardeners who had tended the Americas for millennia were exterminated, leaving the hemisphere to descend into an neglected tangle of "primeval forest." It's likely that this so-called intact forest had never existed before, since humans arrived here as soon as the glaciers receded and began tending the entire landmass with fire and digging stick. The first white explorers describe North America's forests as open enough to drive wagons through. Two centuries later these agroforests had deteriorated to the black tangles immortalized by Whitman and Thoreau.

Wilderness may be merely a European concept imposed on a depopulated and abandoned landscape. The indigenous people of the Americas were master terraformers, using a hard-learned understanding of ecological processes to preserve the fundamental integrity of natural systems while utterly transforming the land into a place where humans belonged and could thrive. They were truly a part of nature, and likely did not make a distinction, as environmentalists do, between land where people belong and land where we do not. I'll certainly agree that people carrying chainsaws and riding bulldozers don't belong everywhere. But I'm beginning to think that gardeners, with gentle tools and sensitive spirits, have been and might again be the best planetary land managers the Earth can have.

Read complete essay (by Toby Hemenway, Permaculture Activist)

Facing the New Dark Age: A Grassroots Approach

2005-10-08T03:18:00.000-07:00

What would a grassroots approach to the coming crisis look like? It would begin with individuals learning the skills needed to build a sustainable society within the shell of the collapsing industrial system. These people would revive the basic skills of postindustrial survival, learning how to light a fire, grow a garden, treat an illness, and fight off an assault without any help from the industrial system, using simple hand tools and the capacities of their own bodies and minds. These skills would be practiced and mastered, not merely learned intellectually, so they could be used and taught to others at a moment's notice.

Read complete essay (by John Michael Greer)

How Can We Prepare for the Coming Crisis?

2005-10-07T05:24:00.000-07:00

When the avalanche begins, life will begin to become more and more chaotic. We will find ourselves torn between the desire to cling to what we have and know, or moving and readjusting into a new way of life. The latter choice is going to be the most difficult to take, since we can’t know ahead of time what that new life will be like—we will be literally making it up as we go along. But in times that demand action, uncertainty and hesitation can be costly. And if you are locked into your current way of life and thinking, or if you cling to complacency and denial, you’ll be like a deer in the headlights. It’s going to be very tempting to think: “This is America!…Things can’t get that bad…Our leaders say they can solve this problem if we just all tow the line…Somehow I’ll weather the storm…”. And maybe that’s so…. But it is very, very unlikely that not taking responsibility for your life is going to be the proper response to a large-scale crisis. Also, our media and government are hardly quick to admit the truth, so it’s likely that they will continually report that things seem to be “turning up soon”…even as the long slide continues to unfold.

Seeing how critical the problems are for our way of life, I know that it’s going to be extremely difficult for things not to snowball out of control. And I’m not the only one. The number of level-headed, educated, intelligent people to foresee disaster for the American way of life is growing quite large. If you’ve found this website, you’re probably already traveling within that circle. But it’s important to understand that at some point soon that number will reach a kind of critical mass, and that’s the point when the people who have not prepared will find themselves already left behind.

Read complete essay (by Steven Lagavulin)

The Coming of Deindustrial Society: A Practical Response

2005-10-07T04:58:00.000-07:00

So what does work? The key to making sense of constructive action in a situation of impending industrial collapse is to look at the community, rather than the individual or society as a whole, as the basic unit. We know from history that local communities can continue to flourish while empires fall around them. There are, however, three things a community needs to do that, and all three of them are in short supply these days.

First, a community needs some degree of local organization. Our present culture here in America has discarded most of the local organizations it once had, in favor of a mass society where individuals deal directly with huge government and corporate institutions. This has to be reversed. The recent move to reinvigorate civil society is a step in the right direction. Joining or creating a local community group, and helping to revive local civil society, will help provide your community with voluntary networks of cooperation and mutual aid in difficult times.

Read complete essay (by John Michael Greer)

Timeline of the Unfolding Crisis of Humanity

2005-10-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

Social discomfort will erupt in various ways, and we could expect at least a couple incidents of large-scale rioting in one or more large cities (highest probability lies with Los Angeles). More common will be the rising presence of anti-government and anti-corporate sentiment. In the drive to become independent of the high costs of social infrastructure, many will embrace the emerging popularity of sustainable-living communities, or eco-villages. This will lay the groundwork for how our society will overcome the Crisis period, and will involve a re-discovery of the “local economies” that people participated in before hydrocarbon energy fueled the Industrial Age.

Even as city life becomes more difficult, many rural towns will experience a rebirth as they find themselves reorganized into eco-villages and self-sustaining communities, experiencing an influx of educated, industrious individuals. Life will begin to de-centralize (from an urban-centric structure) and regionalize (around natural resources), and the price of arable land and “hobby farms” will skyrocket. With this return to small, prosperous communities where whole families will be working together for the benefit of the community, a renewed sense of spirituality may begin to bloom. As distribution to these rural areas becomes costlier and more problematic, many things will become unavailable outside of the cities: fast food restaurants will close, as will many other chain stores, and things like truck stops, overnight hotels, and billboards might begin to disappear. However, items that are difficult to manufacture locally will also become scarce, or disappear altogether from smaller communities: electronics (including computers and cell phones), pharmaceutical medicine and medical supplies, plastic and rubber items, etc. Also, rural life may not be entirely safe and secure, as it’s likely that many people with more fearful, xenophobic tendencies will adopt the Survivalist mentality and form paramilitary communities far from the cities.

Read complete essay (by Steven Lagavulin)

The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future

2005-10-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

From the introduction:

"Our generation is on the verge of the most profound catastrophe the human species has ever faced. Death threats to the living earth are coming from all sides. Water, sunlight, air and soil are all threatened. When Eskimos of the far north begin to experience leukemia from atomic radiation and Eskimo mothers’ milk contains crisis levels of PCB’s, we must recognize that every organism on the planet is threatened.
Compounding this crisis is the fact that the prime forces in this affair, the civilized humans, are unable to completely understand the problem. The problem is beneath the threshold of consciousness because humans within civilization (civilization comes from the Latin, civis, referring to those who live in cities, towns and villages) no longer have relationship with the living earth. Civilized people’s lives are focused within the social system itself. They do not perceive the eroding soils and the vanishing forests. These matters do not have the immediate interest of paychecks. The impulse of civilization in crisis is to do what it has been doing, but do it more energetically in order to extricate itself. If soaring population and starvation threaten, often the impulse is to put more pressure on the agricultural soils and cut the forests faster.

We face planetary disaster. The destruction of the planetary life system has been ongoing for thousands of years and is now approaching the final apocalypse which some of us will see in our own lifetimes. Far from being a difficult and complex situation it is actually very simple, if one can understand and accept a few simple and fundamental propositions...."

Read the book (by William H. Kotke)

Imperial Entropy: Collapse of the American Empire

2005-10-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

By KIRKPATRICK SALE

It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. And indeed it is now possible to contemplate, and openly speculate about, its collapse.

The neocons in power in Washington these days, those who were delighted to talk about America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse, just as they ignore the realities of the imperial war in Iraq. But I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the U.S. system is so drastically imperiling itself that it will cause not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but drastically alter the nation itself on the domestic front.

All empires collapse eventually: Akkad, Sumeria, Babylonia, Ninevah, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Mali, Songhai, Mongonl, Tokugawaw, Gupta, Khmer, Hapbsburg, Inca, Aztec, Spanish, Dutch, Ottoman, Austrian, French, British, Soviet, you name them, they all fell, and most within a few hundred years. The reasons are not really complex. An empire is a kind of state system that inevitably makes the same mistakes simply by the nature of its imperial structure and inevitably fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, stratification, heterogeneity, domination, hierarchy, and inequalities.

In my reading of the history of empires, I have come up with four reasons that almost always explain their collapse. (Jared Diamond's new book Collapse also has a list of reasons for societal collapse, slightly overlapping, but he is talking about systems other than empires.) Let me set them out, largely in reference to the present American empire.

First, environmental degradation. Empires always end by destroying the lands and waters they depend upon for survival, largely because they build and farm and grow without limits, and ours is no exception, even if we have yet to experience the worst of our assault on nature. Science is in agreement that all important ecological indicators are in decline and have been for decades: erosion of topsoils and beaches, overfishing, deforestation, freshwater and aquifer depletion, pollution of water, soil, air, and food, soil salinization, overpopulation , overconsumption, depletion of oil and minerals, introduction of new diseases and invigoration of old ones, extreme weather, melting icecaps and rising sealevels, species extinctions, and excessive human overuse of the earth's photosynthetic capacity. As the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson has said, after lengthy examination of human impact on the earth, our "ecological footprint is already too large for the planet to sustain, and it is getting larger." A Defense Department study last year predicted "abrupt climate change," likely to occur within a decade, will lead to "catastrophic" shortages of water and energy, endemic "disruption and conflict," warfare that "would define human life," and a "significant drop" in the planet's ability to sustain its present population. End of empire for sure, maybe end of civilization.

Second, economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive resource exploitation, usually derived from colonies farther and farther away from the center, and eventually fall when the resources are exhausted or become too expensive for all but the elite. This is exactly the path we are on-peak oil extraction, for example, is widely predicted to come in the next year or two-and our economy is built entirely on a fragile system in which the world produces and we, by and large, consume (U.S. manufacturing is just 13 per cent of our GDP). At the moment we sustain a nearly $630 billion trade deficit with the rest of the world-it has leapt by an incredible $500 billion since 1993, and $180 billion since Bush took office in 2001-and in order to pay for that we have to have an inflow of cash from the rest of the world of about $1 billion every day to pay for it, which was down by half late last year. That kind of excess is simply unsustainable, especially when you think that it is the other world empire, China, that is crucial for supporting it, at the tune of some $83 billion on loan to the U.S. treasury.

Add to that an economy resting on a nearly $500 billion Federal budget deficit, making up part of a total national debt of $7.4 trillion as of last fall, and the continual drain on the economy by the military of at least $530 billion a year (not counting military intelligence, whose figure we never know). Nobody thinks that is sustainable either, which is why the dollar has lost value everywhere-down by 30 per cent against the euro since 2000-and the world begins to lose faith in investment here. I foresee that in just a few years the dollar will be so battered that the oil states will no longer want to operate in that currency and will turn to the euro instead, and China will let the yuan float against the dollar, effectively making this nation bankrupt and powerless, unable to control economic life within its borders much less abroad.

Third, military overstretch. Empires, because they are by definition colonizers, are always forced to extend their military reach farther and farther, and enlarge it against unwilling colonies more and more, until coffers are exhausted, communication lines are overextended, troops are unreliable, and the periphery resists and ultimately revolts. The American empire, which began its worldwide reach well before Bush II, now has some 446,000 active troops at more than 725 acknowledged (and any number secret) bases in at least 38 countries around the world, plus a formal "military presence" in no less than 153 countries, on every continent but Antarctica-and nearly a dozen fully armed courier fleets on all the oceans. Talk about overstretch: the U.S. is less than 5 per cent of the world's population. And now that Bush has declared a "war on terror," instead of the more doable war on Al Quada we should have waged, our armies and agents will be on a battlefield universal and permanent that cannot possibly be controlled or contained.

So far that military network has not collapsed, but as Iraq indicates it is mightily tested and quite incapable of establishing client states to do our bidding and protect resources we need. And as anti-American sentiment continues to spread and darken-in all the Muslim countries, in much of Europe, in much of Asia-and as more countries refuse the "structural adjustments" that our IMF-led globalization requires, it is quite likely that the periphery of our empire will begin resisting our dominance, militarily if necessary. And far from having a capacity to fight two wars simultaneously, as the Pentagon once hoped, we are proving that we can't even fight one.

Finally, domestic dissent and upheaval. Traditional empires end up collapsing from within as well as often being attacked from without, and so far the level of dissent within the U.S. has not reached the point of rebellion or secession-thanks both to the increasing repression of dissent and escalation of fear in the name of "homeland security" and to the success of our modern version of bread and circuses, a unique combination of entertainment, sports, television, internet sex and games, consumption, drugs, liquor, and religion that effectively deadens the general public into stupor. But the tactics of the Bush II administration show that it is so fearful of an expression of popular dissent that it is willing to defy and ignore environmental, civil-rights, and progressive groups, to bribe commentators to put out its propaganda, to expand surveillance and data-base invasions of privacy, to use party superiority and backroom tactics to ride roughshod over Congressional opposition, to use lies and deceptions as a normal part of government operations, to break international laws and treaties for short-term ends, and to use religion to cloak its every policy.

It's hard to believe that the great mass of the American public would ever bestir itself to challenge the empire at home until things get much, much worse. It is a public, after all, of which, as a Gallup poll in 2004 found, 61 per cent believe that "religion can answer all or most of today's problems," and according to a Time/CNN poll in 2002 59 per cent believe in the imminent apocalypse foretold in the Book of Revelation and take every threat and disaster as evidence of God's will. And yet, it's also hard to believe that a nation so thoroughly corrupt as this-in all its fundamental institutions, its boughten parties, academies, corporations, brokerages, accountants, governments-and resting on a social and economic base of intolerably unequal incomes and property, getting increasingly unequal, will be able to sustain itself for long. The upsurge in talk about secession after the last election, some of which was deadly serious and led on to organizations throughout most of the blue states, indicates that at least a minority is willing to think about drastic steps to "alter or abolish" a regime it finds itself fundamentally at odds with.

Those four processes by which empires always eventually fall seem to me to be inescapably operative, in varying degrees, in this latest empire. And I think a combination of several or all of them will bring about its collapse within the next 15 years or so.

Jared Diamond's recent book detailing the ways societies collapse suggests that American society, or industrial civilization as a whole, once it is aware of the dangers of its current course, can learn from the failures of the past and avoid their fates. But it will never happen, and for a reason Diamond himself understands.

As he says, in his analysis of the doomed Norse society on Greenland that collapsed in the early 15th century: "The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity." If this is so, and his examples would seem to prove it, then we can isolate the values of American society that have been responsible for its greatest triumphs and know that we will cling to them no matter what. They are, in one rough mixture, capitalism, individualism, nationalism, technophilia, and humanism (as the dominance of humans over nature). There is no chance whatever, no matter how grave and obvious the threat, that as a society that we will abandon those.

Hence no chance to escape the collapse of empire.

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of twelve books, including Human Scale, The Conquest of Paradise, Rebels Against the Future, and The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream.

A Slow Crash: The End of the World in Moderation?

2005-10-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

Imagine the end of the world in moderation. It's hard. We tend to imagine that either the "economy" will recover and we'll go on like 1999 forever, plus flying cars, or else one day "the apocalypse happens" and every component of the industrial system is utterly gone.

I'm not ruling out a global supercatastrophe. A runaway greenhouse effect might turn Earth into another Venus and cook us all. Acidification of the oceans might kill the plankton, and with them everything that needs a lot of oxygen. An instant ice age could happen several ways, and this scenario needs more attention because some humans would survive. But what I'm focusing on here is the scenario that includes only events we're reasonably sure about: the end of cheap energy, the decline of industrial agriculture, currency collapse, economic "depression," wars, famines, disease epidemics, infrastructure failures, and extreme unpredictable weather.

If that's all we get, the crash will be slower and more complex than the kind of people who predict crashes like to predict. It won't be like falling off a cliff, more like rolling down a rocky hill. There won't be any clear before, during, or after...

The popular image of "anarchy" is another lie, an elitist caricature of lower class people as stupid and randomly dangerous, mindless and incomprehensible like a tornado. In reality, in the Rodney King riots, people were intelligent enough to not harm the Korean grocery stores where the owners had been nice to them. I was in the Seattle WTO "riots," and the destructive actions were not mindless and crazy, but calm, deliberate, and focused.

The function of propaganda is not to tell us what to think but to sink us deeper in what we already thoughtlessly believe: in this case, that in the absence of central control we get a dog-eat-dog universe full of shocking crimes. That's what we have now. The every-man-for-himself morality is a symptom of a culture that uses excess wealth and zero-sum competition to maintain hierarchy. In the absence of wealth and control, people get nicer. We learn to take responsibility, to work together, to help each other... until a new dominator appears and crushes us down.

All the worst mass-killings of history have been top-down. Genocide happens not when central control stops but when it stops holding back. If the killers are not direct agents of government or industry, they are ordinary people who know they have both the protection and the ideological guidance of the biggest bad-ass of the moment. Usually the ideology is utopian: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, French revolutionaries, American "settlers," and now American neoconservatives and dominionists, all have justified their mass murders with a grandiose vision of a noble conflict to wipe the world clean and build heaven. The danger is not "terrorism" or "chaos" -- the danger is a new order that declares you the danger.

Read complete essay (by Ran Prieur)

contra-g8

2005-09-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Some Thoughts on "Peak Oil" as a "Disinformation Campaign"

2005-07-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

a well-reasoned rebuttal
by Steven Lagavulin (from deconsumption)

I always hesitate to spend too much time covering the "Peak Oil" issue. For one thing, there are already so many other sites doing so very thoroughly. And for another, there are so many other, more immediate crisis issues which are curiously convening upon the human race at this particular moment in history....However, a reader posted a comment recently which ended in this passing remark regarding the Peak Oil concept that I wanted to respond to more publicly: "It is obvious from this information that indeed the "crisis" is created and you all have apparently fallen for the bait OR are in on the scam and just trying to keep it going."

In this instance, the reader had heard about the huge amounts of oil sands and oil shale deposits thoughout North America, and naturally wondered whether the whole "peak oil" crisis was simply just a load of hooey...or even possibly a conspiracy being propagated on the public by Big Oil. And in one way or another, this same suspicion has been coming up time and again in many places. So I thought I'd take a moment to simply offer up my own thoughts on this question about "peak oil" as a "disinformation campaign."

First of all, the Peak Oil argument is not new, by any means...it has actually been around for many decades (I somewhat remember a reference to it being posited "in theory" even prior to the turn of the 20th century), but has been steadily gaining a weight of evidence and popular acceptance only recently. If it appears to have suddenly "burst" onto the scene it's due to two principle factors: 1) the "tipping point" is only now fast being realized, and 2) the rise of the internet has given the public a comprehensive, responsive and uncensored media forum in which to recognize it. The former factor stems from the prevalent human characteristic for ignoring undesireable signs and warnings until they can no longer be ignored. But the latter is, I believe, the key to the whole question....

For 99.9999% of the people now "waking up" to this concept, it is 100% due to public investigation and dissemination of information on the internet. The word "public" here may be misleading, because much of this "public" participation actually includes highly knowledgeable and recognized "experts" in various fields. But in this manner the case for Peak Oil has been slowly pieced together by a kind of open committee of researchers--some admittedly dubious or ill-informed, but many quite well-informed and highly regarded. This kind of "research by consensus" is probably unique to the advent of the internet, and often submits a new piece of "evidence" to an immediate "trial by fire." And in the past two or three years that I've been aware of the "peak" issue, I've seen how it has actually been a fairly hard-fought battle to build the case toward even the minimal level of acceptance it now has. And as the "awareness" grows, it brings with it greater and greater numbers of skeptics and critics. Which is why people like Matt Simmons and Matt Savinar and James Kunstler have made it into a profession to go over the same material again and again and again....

"Disinformation" or "misinformation" tactics practiced within this type of forum could at best only aim to "muddy the waters" a little bit, but they could not effectively "create" an issue of this scale where none existed. There are simply too many people involved in the "processing."

Also, it's important to remember that the internet as an information and news source is still primarily an elitist medium: it demands a certain degree of experience and savvy, and an active desire to educate oneself. The vast majority of the population does not "get their news" from the internet, and likely never will...and is therefore almost completely unaware of what their future holds.

For these reasons, the internet is hardly the medium of choice for spearheading an effort toward perversely influencing broad public opinion. If there were governmental or corporate agencies interested in this type of tactic, they would most efficiently do so through the more centralized and broad-reaching mainstream media. And in fact, what we typically see is actually the contrary effect: that the issues which "break out" from the free-press that is the internet to the more mainstream media are issues which were being suppressed from public knowledge. In these cases, the internet serves to build a critical-mass on an individual by individual basis, until the popular media can no longer ignore it (and certain issues are so inflammatory that even this is not sufficient).

Are profits up for oil firms? Yes, they're up monstrously. But this would have been the case regardless of whether Peak Oil is a "scam" or an immediate reality. And certainly, if you "follow the money" in other ways to see who ultimately profits by all this, you can find a myriad of reasons why, as a colleague of mine remarked once, "if peak oil didn't exist they would have been forced to invent it." But "they" didn't. We did. The concerns over oil depletion were not "leaked", they weren't "rumored", they weren't "reported" or "purported"--they were built from the ground up by dedicated, open-source, volunteer researchers.

Of course, it makes perfect sense that with an issue of this magnitude many people would generally desire a kind of "stamp of approval" by recognized "authorities"...and absent that, it's difficult to believe that the "faceless" internet could be a trustworthy informant. But then when I look into the subject and see the large amount of research contributed by people with recognized knowledge in varying fields and backgrounds, and when I see that these people have so little to gain (but perhaps a bit of fleeting "cyberfame"), I begin to realize that it more rightly becomes a question of asking: Why is it that our "authorities" continue to ignore these concerns?

But then, of course, if "they" did address the issue...if a President's Council on Peak Oil was assembled, or if mandatory Reserve Accounting Report filings were demanded from the large U.S. oil firms...could any benefit possibly come as a result of "giving the issue over to them"? Or would this simply filibuster the issue permanently and completely, thereby destroying any chance that we, the individual members of American society, might make the vital decisions and begin adopting the pivotal changes that the mere "concept" of Peak Oil is asking of us?

I'm certainly not the first person to point out that, if the peak moment of the Oil Age does not come--and come very, very soon--then the planet itself will ultimately collapse under the burden of "Peak Human Progress."

BioDemocracy

2005-01-15T04:52:00.000-08:00